I am not terribly familiar with the process, but I assure you it includes: early computational simulations of the prospective molecules; testing on lab animals;

I am not terribly familiar with the process, but I assure you it includes: early computational simulations of the prospective molecules; testing on lab animals; testing on healthy people; testing on small (a few hundred) number of patients; large scale (a few thousand) multi-centre trials across the whole world (if you want to sell it to the whole world, that is). This process takes quite a number of years. Now imagine how many labs, hospitals, scientists, doctors, statisticians, patients (oh they do get compensation), and auxiliary clerical workers need to be paid for the whole process.