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ok, so 65 drugs in development, with 6.5 drugs released per year? does that seem plausible for the entire pharma industry?

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The FDA approved 53 novel drugs in 2020. That was relatively high; most years have lower totals.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/817534/annual-novel-drug...

You notice you are off by a factor 10 and don't pause for a moment but instead immediately go "ok, so"?

If it costs a billion dollars to develop a drug and pharma spends 6.5 billion on ads, that would mean an implausibly small number of drugs being developed, no?

I don't see any reason to believe that pharma spends more on ads than R&D. Do you?

> that would mean

No.

> Do you?

The fact that you just reposted your above comment without any change despite knowing it was wrong and despite being called out on that. That seems like a strong point in favor of the opposite of whatever your position is.

Just to chime in; the poster you're replying to is correct regarding your incorrectness related to the relative weighting of R&D vs. Marketing spend.

Pull a public filing for these companies and take a look at their balance sheets; it's pretty straight forward.

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