The Golden Age of Medical Innovation

Writing in The American John Calfee surveys the recent history of medical innovation.  I was especially struck by Lucentis, a new drug that Science magazine ranked sixth in its ten breakthroughs of the year (number one was the solution to Poincare’s conjecture).   Lucentis has had stunning success in treating age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in seniors. 

What makes Lucentis, as Calfee notes, especially interesting is that Lucentis is what industry critics call a "me-too" drug, a simple twist on another drug.  Moreover, it’s a twist on a drug originally approved to to treat cancer but subsequently used off-label to treat AMD.