DEREK LOWE: Small pharma startups running dry. “How many ideas that might have taken off are we going to miss, and how many therapies that could have worked out, if the money had held out a bit longer? The Citis and Caterpillers of the world are getting the headlines with their massive layoffs, understandably. But there are a lot of outfits that you’ve never heard of that are in the process of losing everything.” But new businesses don’t have enough clout to get bailouts, or to avoid taxation, meaning that the political system tends to reward failure and punish success.