They drop insane money up front to do a trial, get approved, and then have low single-digit years to recoup all that investment before the new medication goes off patent a competitor markets a generic that blows up the market and likely isn't as well-tested.

And then, in the extreme case, you might get blown away on the street and have your murderer canonized.

But I guess that AI will fix all these perverse incentives Real Soon Now.

It doesn't make sense to extend drug patent lengths though because often enough, after the release of a compound, it takes just a few years for a new and updated version of it to be researched.

However, the counterpoint can also be made that it should be extended, as the permit process for medical compounds takes years and costs billions, with the short patent lifetime forcing pharma companies to command absurd prices just to recoup the R&D cost.

(IMHO: the system on how we research pharmaceuticals and how we fund it must be drastically reformed. The question is, how do we prevent China and India from just taking our research and copying it for free, it's already bad enough)