3 December 2016 - 2016 was a bummer! After years of rising FDA approvals that swelled to an all-time high of 51 new drugs in 2015, they plummeted to 22 last year—a 57% drop—down to a level not seen since 2010. 

What happened? Reversal to the mean? A harbinger of worse things to come? 

The answer matters because we spend $328 billion a year to buy our medicines in the U.S. ($697 billion worldwide), and the less productive the industry R&D, the more remote the prospect of enjoying affordable great drugs again.

Read Forbes magazine article