

The Cost Of Creating A New Drug Now $5 Billion, Pushing Big Pharma To Change - refurb
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/08/11/how-the-staggering-cost-of-inventing-new-drugs-is-shaping-the-future-of-medicine/

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abhishivsaxena
"There is a long history of political controversy around drug industry claims
about the expense of developing new medicines. Pharmaceutical companies have
defended the prices of their drugs by pointing to past estimates of the cost
of developing a new medicine. Most of these estimates, which took a bottom-up
approach of estimating each step in the drug development process, came in far
below the numbers I’m using here."

Hear this argument hundreds of times. But still Novartis had a Net Income of
9.245 billion(2011), Johnson & Johnson 9.672 billion(2012), and Pfizer 14.57
billion(2012).

And it has remained in that range over the last few years I looked at -
[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AJNJ&fstype=ii&ei=PGk...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AJNJ&fstype=ii&ei=PGkJUtmeCKaHwAOI1QE)

Now, doesn't that mean that pharmaceutical industry isn't as risky as they
make it seem? In most industries you would see prices coming down, but not in
this case. I wonder why :sarcasm:

