I 100% agree. the criteria for sucess is something that is missed by simplyifying things to a number.

Those failures can include drugs that would be considerer miraculous 10 or 20 years ago. You might have a drug that functionally cures HIV, but failed to outperform the standard of care in a RCT.

You have drugs like Lorbrena for non-small cell lung cancer where the median life extension is unknown because >50% of patients are alive 7 years out. Or Keytruda where 50% of advanced melenoma patients appear functionally cured 10 years post treatment.

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bonsai_spool 32 minutes ago | parent [-]

This comment makes no sense.

Why would anyone make a drug if the current prevalent treatment was as good as a functional cure?

What do lorbrena and keytruda have to do with the rate of failures being constant?

	▲	db48x 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		These are examples of ambitious drugs that wouldn’t have been attempted even a few decades earlier. But technology improved and the money was there so they tried anyway, and found success. But for any 3 successes there are still 27 failures because those 27 were equally ambitious.