Pharmaceutical companies spend more than ever 01 research and development; yet t

游客2024-01-12  16

问题 Pharmaceutical companies spend more than ever 01 research and development; yet the number of new drugs patented each year has dropped since 1963. At the same time, profits—at constant 1963 dollars— or the industry as a whole have been steadily increasing.
Which of the following, if true, is the single factor most likely to explain, at least in part, the three trends mentioned above for money spent, drugs patented, and profits made?

选项 A、Government regulations concerning testing requirements for novel drugs have become steadily more stringent.
B、Research competition among pharmaceutical companies has steadily intensified as a result of a general narrowing of research targets to drugs for which there is a large market.
C、Many pharmaceutical companies have entered into collaborative projects with leading universit es, while others have hired faculty members away from universities by offering very generous salaries.
D、The number of cases in which one company’s researchers duplicated work done by another company’s researchers has steadily grown.
E、The advertising budgets of the major pharmaceutical companies have grown at a higher rate than their profits have. 243. Under the agricultural policies of Country R, farmers can sell any grain not sold on the open market to a grain board at guaranteed prices. It seems inevitable that, in order to curb the resultant escalating overproduction, the grain board will in just a few years have to impose quotas on grain production, limiting farmers to a certain flat percentage of the grain acreage they cultivated previously.

答案 B

解析 Of the five factors indicated in the answer choices, which one most helps to explain all three of the trends?
The information provided about the pharmaceutical industry indicates three long-term trends since 1963: increased research spending, increased profits, and reduction in the number of patents granted.
Note that in a case where the pharmaceutical industry produced fewer—yet more lucrative— new drugs as a result of its increased research investment, its profits might increase even if fewer new patents were granted.
A    Although the stringency of government regulations could help explain increased research spending and the granting of fewer patents, it fails to explain why profits would increase in the long term.
B    Correct. This helps explain all three factors. It suggests that each company has had to boost its research spending, but with a narrowing of focus to produce mass-market drugs with enormous potential for profit This narrowing of focus could explain why fewer drugs are being patented.
C    Collaboration between pharmaceutical companies and leading universities would not help explain all three trends. It could indicate that the pharmaceutical companies have reduced their investment in their in-house research infrastructure. That is, perhaps these companies find it less expensive to farm out research to universities where a powerful research infrastructure already exists. Even if this could help explain increased research spending, nothing indicates that it would help explain the trends in profits or patents.
D    Companies doing similar or duplicative
research could indicate certain inefficiencies in research spending, which could help explain the research-spending trend and the trend regarding patents. Nevertheless, it still fails to explain the trend of increasing profits.
E    This does not explain the trend regarding research spending or the trend regarding patents.
The correct answer is B.
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