4 ms·
One of the reasons why biotech has so low success is that we see it as kinda ok to unleash a half tested app onto people, basically most startup apps out there,
by est31 6y ago
One of the reasons why biotech has so low success is that we see it as kinda ok to unleash a half tested app onto people, basically most startup apps out there, while new drugs are extremely hard to get tested.
It's kinda understandable given that some drugs can have serious negative long term effects on people, whereas a buggy CRUD app can't really do much harm in comparison.
While the costs of a "buggy" drug are usually larger than the cost of a buggy app, the benefits of a "good" drug are usually larger than the benefit of yet another app to share pictures, or a uber but for X.
Just see how much it costs to save the economy just from the corona measures. The opposite of that is the benefit of a 1 year increase of people's healthy life spans, much more in fact as only parts of the economy were shut down.
- neilv 6y agoI think "move fast, and break things" isn't as catchy, when it's harder to ignore that "things" being broken are often people.
- est31 6y agoSpot on.
- jamestimmins 6y agoYeah "move fast and kill people" doesn't have the same ring to it
- somurzakov 6y agomodern pharma R&D is pretty much move fast and break things. All modern pharma firms spend enourmous effort to ensuring that errors are cought as early as possible (shift left) in R&D. Hundreds of molecule candidates are discarded before reaching Phase 3 trials
- Eridrus 6y agoMost of the cost in pharma trials is not due to safety testing, it is in testing whether it is effective and whether it is better than the competition. I'm not really involved in pharma, but there seems to be a decent argument for selling the drug with provisional approval after safety has been established and collecting outcomes data for those who use provisional drugs https://reason.com/2018/02/02/right-to-try-fda-drug-trials/ https://reason.com/2018/02/02/right-to-try-fda-drug-trials/
- Eridrus 6y agoI don't think this comparison holds up. In software, the reason to release something early is because it is hard to tell if there is demand for what you have built and getting feedback from the market is vital. In pharma, I think the success criteria are much better understood, but it's just really hard to do what people want. Not so say our regulatory system isn't a shitshow that needs reform, but I don't think there is the same benefit of releasing buggy versions. Having said that, there are a lot of arguments for reforming how we do later stage clinical trials to provide access to potentially life saving drugs as well as reducing the costs of drug development https://reason.com/2018/02/02/right-to-try-fda-drug-trials/ https://reason.com/2018/02/02/right-to-try-fda-drug-trials/