The Truth About the Drug Companies

"Of the seventy-eight drugs approved by the FDA in 2002, only seventeen contained new active ingredients, and only seven of these were classified by the FDA as improvements over older drugs. The other seventy-one drugs approved that year were variations of old drugs or deemed no better than drugs already on the market. In other words, they were me-too drugs. Seven of seventy-eight is not much of a yield. Furthermore, of those seven, not one came from a major US drug company."

This is an interesting observation if the claim by drug companies is that they innovate, while the claim by critics of the companies is that they don't innovate much. The source cited in the submitted article appears to be the most reliable source for such an observation. I wonder what a longer time series would look like: was 2002 chosen because it is the most recently reported year (could it be, in 2009?) or because it was an unusual year? What would a longer span of years look like in this regard?