[twoodfin]

"Marketing" is not just ads. It's important things like talking to doctors and patients about the shortcomings of current drugs and their perception of the relative benefits of potential new drugs. It's analyzing your competitors' pipelines to avoid spending hundreds of millions developing a drug that will be obsolete before it is launched. It's understanding the regulatory environment in dozens of markets and adapting a product and sales strategy for each. And yes, it's communicating to doctors and patients the benefits of your new products.

If these companies could produce more drugs that would help patients and ensure that doctors, hospitals, patients and insurers knew enough about those drugs to spend more money to acquire them by spending less money on marketing, of course they would. So would Toyota, or IBM or any other company with something to sell.