High drug prices reflect high failure rates
LaMattina argues that the cost of the few approved drugs must carry the many that fail in development. Pricing critics ignore that most candidates die before reaching patients.
Drug truths
6 ideas
The attrition funnel of discovery
Thousands of compounds are screened for each one that survives preclinical, clinical, and regulatory gates to become a medicine. Each stage kills most candidates, and late failures are the most expensive.
Serendipity and biology set the pace, not effort
Drug timelines are governed by the difficulty of the underlying biology, so throwing money at a target does not guarantee a cure. Progress is bounded by nature, not corporate will.
Industry does real, not merely derivative, science
He contests the view that pharma only commercializes academic work, arguing companies do essential translational research academia cannot. The medicine, not the paper, is the hard part.
Patents as a limited runway
A drug's patent clock starts long before approval, leaving a short window to recoup costs before generics arrive. This compressed exclusivity shapes both pricing and which diseases get pursued.
Insider transparency as advocacy
LaMattina writes as a former research head aiming to correct public misunderstanding by explaining the process from inside. The book is a reputational defense framed as education.