Government regulations concerning testing requirements for novel drugs have become steadily more stringent.

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.

Many pharmaceutical companies have entered into collaborative projects with leading universities, while others have hired faculty members away from universities by offering very generous salaries.

The number of cases in which one company’s researchers duplicated work done by another company’s researchers has steadily grown.

The advertising budgets of the major pharmaceutical companies have grown at a higher rate than their profits have.