When I was cutting my teeth in the pharmaceutical industry, I worked a lot in Infectious Disease. It was a great therapeutic area to be in — working on antibacterials had a real “Us vs. Them” dynamic that you could embrace, as opposed to working in oncology, which has a “you vs. screwed-up you” downer…
So for the last several years, I’ve had a regular check-up with my dermatologist where every six months I give him my co-pay and he takes out the liquid nitrogen wand and zaps half a dozen or so things on my head and arms, reminds me to keep wearing hats, and use sunscreen. Such was…
There’s a scene in every version of Frankenstein where Dr. Frankenstein seeks to animate his creation. In the Kenneth Branagh version from the 1990s, he has an inanimate Robert De Niro in a big metal tube, which he then floods with fluid and electricity. And, of course, eventually De Niro starts kicking. The spark of…
Early in my scientific career I was in a meeting to decide what one of our department’s new drug discovery projects was going to be. A team made a presentation on a prospective target, which was scientifically solid but was shot down because the potential market was too small. Not enough people had the disease,…
So, as a scientist that has spent a good chunk of my career in the pharmaceutical business, I’m usually pretty quick to dismiss the latest “new age” therapy that claims to cure this that or the other thing, largely because when held up to the scrutiny of a well-controlled clinical trial most turn out to…
Stevil 