Moore’s Law is well known… computers get about twice as fast/powerful every 18 months. But less well known is Eroom’s Law, which shows that developing new drugs becomes more difficult/expensive over time. Gentlemen, behold:
That new drugs are becoming exponentially more expensive to develop should not be surprising. Beyond the problems of government regulation, there’s the fact that the “low hanging fruit” have already been picked. As with physics, the days when one lone guy or a small team can make great strides are very likely largely over, because everything that could be done cheaply and easily has been done cheaply and easily. but unlike physics, medicine also has the problem that germs are actively evolving to combat the medicines. Galileo didn’t have to worry about Earth reversing gravity just to muck with his acceleration experiments.