To what extent can approached to innovation influence the trend line in the graph above? I don't think that anyone really knows the answer. The different approaches being taken by Merck and Pfizer, for instance, represent a real world policy experiment:
The contrast between Merck and Pfizer reflects the very different personal approaches of their CEOs. An accountant by training, Mr. Read has held various business positions during a three-decade career at Pfizer. The 57-year-old cited torcetrapib, a cholesterol medicine that the company spent more than $800 million developing but then pulled due to safety concerns, as an example of the kind of wasteful spending Pfizer would avoid.
"We're going to have metrics," Mr. Read said. He wants Pfizer to stop "always investing on hope rather than strong signals and the quality of the science, the quality of the medicine."
Mr. Frazier, 56, a Harvard-educated lawyer who joined Merck in 1994 from private practice, said the company was sticking by its own troubled heart drug, vorapaxar. Mr. Frazier said he wanted to see all of the data from the trials before rushing to judgment. "We believe in the innovation approach," he said.