Words about science and hiking
I admit to doing a spit-take when I saw the title of this article: Aptamers as Therapeutic Agents: Has the Initial Euphoria Subsided?. At this stage in the game, with only one aptamer therapeutic cleared and it having perennially weak sales, that question mark in the title seems more than a bit out of date. Read More …
From Quora: “Excessive” is loaded term. Worse, it’s subjective and difficult to define. Let’s see if we can put it into some kind of context or framework that permits a useful discussion. Congress, always sensitive to public resentment over drug prices, had the GAO do a study on drug company profitability. The 1-page summary, which you should definitely Read More …
Once in a while you see an idea that is both so brilliant and so obvious that you just have to smack your head and ask “Why has no one thought of this before? Why didn’t I think of it?”. There’s a general consensus that broad-spectrum antibiotics are over-used. The consequences are many and egregious: Read More …
One of the ways that science journalism continually fails the public is by ignoring the Valley of Death that lies between discovery and product development. The problem is especially acute in healthcare, where the maddening complexity and unpredictability of clinical responses dooms most “breakthroughs” to failure. The problem is less ignorance on the part of Read More …
Today’s sci journo fail is a bonus entry – it is also a history fail. The title, “COLONIALISTS ARE COMING FOR BLOOD—LITERALLY” pretty well sums up the argument: taking blood samples for therapeutic and diagnostic development purposes is exactly the same as stealing diamonds, gold, timber, arable land and people from poorer countries. Please. Blood Read More …
NB – this question was first posted on Quora in 2010 The fact that this question is as relevant in 2019 as it was in 2010 tells us something, does it not? I think we can throw out the “we just need more time” plea. Francis Collins, leader of the human genome initiative and now Read More …
Let’s step back a bit on this question. We care about antibiotics and antibiotic resistance because they impact our ability to avoid suffering and death due to bacterial infections. Antibiotics are just a means to an end. Antibiotic resistance blocks one path to that end, but it is just one path; there are others. I’ll Read More …
The prevailing narrative on drug prices, especially in the US, is that they are getting ridiculously expensive and unaffordable. That makes a story that’s easy to write – villainous drug companies vs desperate patients unable to afford life-saving medicine. But it’s almost completely wrong. Not the expensive part – the life-saving part. Most drugs – Read More …
After decades of stagnation, I believe we are witnessing a renaissance of antibiotic discovery research. There are two principal factors driving a resurgence in antibiotic discovery today: availability of public funding, and application of rational design and systems biology approaches. For several decades now, antibiotics have been (and remain) a medium-risk/low-reward proposition for drug developers. Read More …
There’s no question that pharmaceuticals – and the industry that produces them – have saved untold numbers of lives and reduced suffering on a scale that is unprecedented in human history. But I believe we are entering a new phase in which the viability of pharma is based more on faith than on evidence. The Read More …