One Dangerous Idea of Drug Research
The most dangerous idea in drug research, as we know it, is its eventual demise. There will come a day when the structure and regulation of the entire Biosome is understood to atomic detail. Gone will be the days of artificial regulation of gene products; disease will be vanquished by altering or replacing the faulty genes that would have otherwise caused it. Drugs, to the extent they are needed at all, will be designed on computers with mathematical precision on an individual basis. Statistical approximations via experiments on animals will be a thing of the past. Cancer will no longer kill millions as the mysteries of apoptosis will be solved. Human beings, and if they choose their animal companions as well (!), for better or worse will live dramatically longer lives.