Written by: Shailesh Chitnis, Global business correspondent, The Economist

P.advancement in computing Moore’s Law, a rule of thumb that says the cost of processing power drops roughly in half every two years, has long been described. The pharmaceutical industry follows the opposite rule. Its version, called Eroom’s law (Moore spelled backwards), suggests that the cost of developing a new drug doubles approximately every nine years. $1 billion (in 2008 prices) was spent on research and development in the 1960s (R&D) has produced approximately ten new drugs. Today, the same $1 billion is not enough to produce even one.