The long road to a blockbuster drug
One thousand dollars per pill?
A single treatment course for hepatitis C virus to cost $83,000?
How can those prices be justified?
The drug-discovery process is a long one, fraught with disappointments and massive investment, no matter what the outcome. Some pharmaceutical companies argue that the high prices charged for their rare “blockbuster” drugs help them recover research and development costs.
While drug pricing and drug access are contentious and controversial issues — ones …