> Research doesn't cost $2.5 billion, lobbying does. It... actually does. The utter majority of pharmaceutical cost are the clinical trials, and the cost of "f

> Research doesn't cost $2.5 billion, lobbying does. It... actually does. The utter majority of pharmaceutical cost are the clinical trials, and the cost of "failed" compounds has to be absorbed by the few that eventually pass. It used to be the case that the development part would be done by universities and government grants, but universities these days prefer to hoard their inheritances instead of spending it, and governments lack the ideas and auditing capability, so everything has gotten privatized and with it, control transferred from democratically elected institutions to quarterly-focused boards accountable only to shareholders not society.