The Drug Hunters: The Improbable Quest to Discover New Medicines

Kirsch, a veteran drug hunter, takes a lively and sweeping look at the history of drug discovery and how difficult, expensive, and pivotal the search has proven to be. It’s an enlightening, if ominous, survey. With the aid of science writer Ogas, Kirsch runs through a bevy of landmark drug finds, including the development of laudanum, an alcohol-based opium preparation, in the 16th century; the isolation of the active chemical in quinine in 1820; the synthesis of pain-blocking ether in 1846; the 1899 creation of the compound aspirin; the 1910 discovery of arsphenamine, a treatment for syphilis; the making of penicillin, the first broad-spectrum antibiotic, in 1940; and the research that led to an oral contraceptive pill in the 1950s. “The soaring cost of developing new drugs creates financial disincentives that prevent pharma companies from focusing on drugs that produce cures,” Kirsch writes of today’s modern dilemma. Indeed, he notes, on average, getting a new pharmaceutical product approved by the FDA takes about 14 years and costs approximately $1.5 billion. Kirsch sidesteps wider problems in the healthcare industry to conclude that overcoming the obstacles to creating new pharmaceuticals will require granting scientists “creative control over the drug hunting process.” (Jan.)