Who got punished for the J&J asbestos issue? Who got punished for cigarettes and their deceptive advertising? And how badly did the Sacklers get slapped for causing the opioid epidemic?

If you're making the argument that they should be punished proportionally to their effects then all of these cases should result in the individuals being jailed for life at bare minimum and their assets forfeited. Yet this hasn't happened. Why?

I can't answer why, but I would suggest it has very little to do with the government spending on research, or in the way it allocates it annually vs 4 year blocks.

I have noted in the past that I do enjoy how intense the FTC and other consumer protection style agencies get when Democrats run the whitehouse, ideally companies would behave because if they dont the institution that has a monopoly on violence will club em really good, so to speak. IMO Citizens united and the way we fund the political game has broken the incentives to being a company on good merit rather than on legalized corruption.