In the span of a single week, Novartis confronted what the pharmaceutical industry fears most: not one failure, but three — each one a reminder that the distance between scientific promise and marketable medicine is measured in years, billions, and uncertainty. The collapse of a Phase 3 dystrophy trial tied to its $12 billion Avidity acquisition anchored the worst of the losses, sending shares down 10 percent and erasing roughly $10 billion in market value in a single session. What markets punish most is not misfortune but the suspicion of pattern — and three consecutive pipeline failures in f