AI Discovers New Uses for Old Drugs
The NYTimes has an excellent piece by Kate Morgan on AI discovering new uses for old drugs:
A little over a year ago, Joseph Coates was told there was only one thing left to decide. Did he want to die at home, or in the hospital?
Coates, then 37 and living in Renton, Wash., was barely conscious. For months, he had been battling a rare blood disorder called POEMS syndrome, which had left him with numb hands and feet, an enlarged heart and failing kidneys. Every few days, doctors needed to drain liters of fluid from his abdomen. He became too sick to receive a stem cell transplant — one of the only treatments that could have put him into remission.
“I gave up,” he said. “I just thought the end was inevitable.”
But Coates’s girlfriend, Tara Theobald, wasn’t ready to quit. So she sent an email begging for help to a doctor in Philadelphia named David Fajgenbaum, whom the couple met a year earlier at a rare disease summit.
By the next morning, Dr. Fajgenbaum had replied, suggesting an unconventional combination of chemotherapy, immunotherapy and steroids previously untested as a treatment for Coates’s disorder.
Within a week, Coates was responding to treatment. In four months, he was healthy enough for a stem cell transplant. Today, he’s in remission.
The lifesaving drug regimen wasn’t thought up by the doctor, or any person. It had been spit out by an artificial intelligence model.
AI is excellent at combing through large amounts of data to find surprising connections.
Discovering new uses for old drugs has some big advantages and one disadvantage. A big advantage is that once a drug has been approved for some use it can be prescribed for any use–thus new uses of old drugs do not have to go through the lengthy and arduous FDA approval procedures. In essence, off-label uses have been safety-tested but not FDA efficacy-tested in the new use. I use this fact about off-label prescribing to evaluate the FDA. During COVID, for example, the British Recovery trial, discovered that the common drug, dexamethasone could reduce mortality by up to one-third in hospitalized patients on oxygen support that knowledge was immediately applied, saving millions of lives worldwide:
Within hours, the result was breaking news across the world and hospitals were adopting the drug into the standard care given to all patients with COVID-19. In the nine months following the discovery, dexamethasone saved an estimated one million lives worldwide.
New uses for old drugs are typically unpatentable, which helps keep them cheap—but the disadvantage is that this also weakens private incentives to discover them. While FDA trials for these new uses are often unnecessary, making development costs much lower, the lack of strong market protection can still deter investment. The FDA offers some limited exclusivity through programs like 505(b)(2), which grants temporary protection for new clinical trials or safety and efficacy data. These programs are hard to calibrate—balancing cost and reward is difficult—but likely provide some net benefits.
The NIH should continue prioritizing research into unpatentable treatments, as this is where the market is most challenged. More broadly, research on novel mechanisms to support non-patentable innovations is valuable. That said, I’m not overly concerned about under-investment in repurposing old drugs, especially as AI further reduces the cost of discovery.
The Research Behavior of Individual Investors
Browser data from an approximately representative sample of individual investors offers a detailed account of their search for information, including how much time they spend on stock research, which stocks they research, what categories of information they seek, and when they gather information relative to events and trades. The median individual investor spends approximately six minutes on research per trade on traded tickers, mostly just before the trade; the mean spends around half an hour. Individual investors spend the most time reviewing price charts, followed by analyst opinions, and exhibit little interest in traditional risk statistics. Aggregate research interest is highly correlated with stock size, and salient news and earnings announcements draw more attention. Individual investors have different research styles, and those that focus on short-term information are more likely to trade more speculative stocks.
That is from a new NBER working paper by Toomas Laarits and Jeffrey Wurgler.
Living in Freiburg, Germany
After two years at Harvard, I had finished all of my graduate school courses and oral (!) exams. Then I had a compulsion for what I should do next, something that at the time appeared remarkably stupid, although it worked out very well for me.
At some critical points in my life I have made key decisions with regard to place, including Mexico, Haiti, New Zealand, and as I will write about today, Freiburg, Germany. Each of those decisions fundamentally reshaped my life. None of those decisions were motivated by rational reasons, or indeed much by traditional reasons at all. I simply wanted to do particular things, and then set off to do so.
After two years of study, a Harvard PhD student would be expected to apprentice with a top professor, “live in the basement of the Science Center” (where the computers were those days), and in general become part of the system. Somehow none of that fit me. I decided instead to study for a year in Freiburg, Germany, at the university there, mostly to learn German but also to run away from a particular kind of fate that most of my peers were choosing. And so I departed from Cambridge in 1984-85, aided by a strong dollar and a small grant from the Claude R. Lambe Foundation.
Other than an Oxford and London summer trip at age 17, it was my first time abroad. I flew over with Kroszner, and we rented a car to drive around Germany for a few weeks before I would settle in Freiburg.
Our first stop was Mainz, which was not too far from Frankfurt airport. I was stunned by everything I saw, ranging from the supermarkets to the food to how the downtown was organized. These days Mainz is regarded as a fairly dull city, but then, for me, it was fascinating beyond belief. Unlike England, Germany struck me as a peer country to the United States, with a roughly equal living standard and in some ways a superior way of life.
Other stops on our trip included the beautiful Baden-Baden, Stuttgart, Cologne, Hamburg, Bremen, the “Romantic Road” in Bavaria, and of course Berlin. The one day I spent in East Berlin terrified me. Not primarily because of the living standards (which were low), but because the people seemed so fearful and intimidated. I decided that communism was far worse than I had thought. I was relieved to return to West Berlin, which at the time had that Cold War, party town, otherworldly feel. Try watching “Wings of Desire” some day.
Once I settled into Freiurg I was on my own. I refused to hang out with the other American students, and so I learned German pretty quickly. I developed a morning routine of walking to buy the International Herald Tribune, working on my dissertation in the morning on a typewriter, and going into town for lunch and some shopping and errands. Freiburg was the closest I ever have come to living in a proper city, though at the time the population was a mere quarter million or so. Nonetheless one could go “in die Stadt,” an entirely meaningful notion if you know the layout.
I even ended up with a German girlfriend, and from her I learned German all that much better.
Frequently I would feel claustrophobic, and so I would depart for Switzerland, where I would feel even more claustrophobic. Still, I loved those trips, as the sense of perpetual motion was sufficient compensation. Over time I have managed to see every Swiss canton, and I am fond of all of them. For Erleichterung I would visit the Netherlands, or one time Chris Weber came by and we drove to Colmar for Alsatian smoked meats, yum. For Thanksgiving there was an Italy trip to Bergamo and Verona. Later in the spring I went to Venice and Florence.
I had a January lecture tour in Vienna (freezing!), with the Carl Menger Institute, and in May a week-long stint in Graz. My German peers found it literally unbelievable that someone my age had published papers I could present and talk about, in addition to a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed on monetary economics.
I also gave a talk at a jazz club in Vienna, the first (but not last) time I experienced talk-giving as a kind of high class entertainment. I mixed German and English, and told a fair number of jokes, and found I enjoyed that. I am thankful to Albert Zlabinger for arranging that evening.
It was that kind of life. There has never been a year that was more exciting or when I learned more about the world.
Art and painting started making sense to me when I visited the Lenbach Haus in Munich, with Blue Rider works, and the Mondrian museum in The Hague. I retain a special fondness for those artists to this day.
Amsterdam probably was my favorite city, though I now feel it is long since ruined by an excess of tourists. To save money, I would sleep on the houseboats there.
Once I tired of German food, delicious though it may be, I started experimenting on the culinary front, at least as much as I could given my location. That was the time in my life when I started trying everything I could.
It simply stunned me how many things in Germany were better, starting with the bread and orange juice and butter, though hardly ending there.
So every day I learned, learned, learned, and was in pretty constant motion.
By the time I returned to the United States, it was clear I would never be entering on mainstream tracks again.
China AI mandate of the day
Schools in Beijing will introduce AI courses and teaching methods into the primary and secondary school curriculum starting September, to nurture young talent and boost growth in the advancing sector.
In a statement shared on its official website on Friday (Mar 7), Chinese education authorities said schools would “explore and build” AI courses while incorporating AI into “after-school services, club activities, research” and other educational systems in the coming fall semester.
Here is the full story, via Wayne Yap.
Monday assorted links
1. Australia fact of the day: “In 2023-24, for the first time, Australia spent more on in-kind benefits (e.g. the NDIS) than on transfers.”
2. Fine-tuned chatbots seem to work as well as humans for mental health treatments in this RCT.
3. The decline in publicly listed companies is microcaps.
5. Is creative destruction from AI showing up in labor market data?
6. AI art is more likely to look like this than like Rembrandt.
Rebecca Yarros and the vibe shift
The New York Times has described her recent Onyx Storm as the bestselling adult book of the last twenty years, as the work sold 2.7 million copies in the first week of publication. Out of curiosity I started the book, but it is not for me. It feels like reading a computer game? Grok 3 suggested it attempts to be “adrenaline-fueled,” with “vivid sensory details.” The sex scenes are remarkably explicit for regular popular fiction. The plot is centered around dragons (I did enjoy the first Paolini book).
According to the book jacket, Yarros “loves military heroes” and has six children. One of them was first fostered, and then adopted. She cofounded with her husband a non-profit to help kids in foster care.
And so the vibe shift continues.
Start your podcast (from my email)
This is all from Andrew Mitrak, I will not double indent:
“Back in January, I listened to your interview on the Frames of Space podcast. You shared some advice that I haven’t seen you share elsewhere, so I’m pasting a transcript below here (transcribed with Gemini 2.5 Pro)
Host: Do you see podcasts in general, especially podcasts from academics, as a way to bridge the gap between humanities academia and the real world.
Tyler: I don’t think they need to be from academics. Maybe on average academics are worse at doing podcasts because they are not forced to get to the point by their other training.
But I think if you have good content and a clearly defined niche, you can get considerable mind share from important and influential people by doing podcasts and there’s still room for more.
If you do something Joe Rogan-like you can make a lot of money. That’s not mainly how people can succeed, but if you want an actual audience, I would say try doing a podcast. Just make it good and don’t worry whether or not you’re an academic.
Host: Make it good and make it consistent, and that’s all that matters.
Tyler: And have it, you know, it should have a clear image. So if your podcast is well, you know, I focus on the dobro guitar. Like that’s an obscure thing, right? But in fact, there are people out there who play the dobro. They probably don’t already have their own podcast. And if you’re thinking of doing that, you should do it.
I heard this while I was putting together my own niche podcast about marketing history. I had doubts about whether the podcast was worth pursuing, and your advice hit me at the right time and encouraged me to follow through on it. I’m a few months into the podcast and your advice has proven correct. I get to speak with some of the most interesting authors, academics, and marketers I admire just because I host a podcast. Other important and influential people have discovered my podcast, either organically or through podcast guests sharing the show. It’s not topping the Spotify charts, but these connections have been incredibly rewarding.”
Sunday assorted links
2. The Zvi on Gemini 2.5. I agree it is very strong.
3. Very old interview with Hrishikesh Mukherjee.
4. Does Boulez still matter? A good talk, too bad the speaker doesn’t like Boulez’s best works!
5. “Already, Russia is starting to push back against a flood of cheap Chinese imports. It has introduced tariffs on some Chinese goods and raised recycling fees on imported cars, effectively raising the price of vehicles from China.” WSJ link.
That was then, this is now — Liverpool heliport edition
For a brief moment in the mid-1950s, it seemed as if Liverpool’s transportation system was about to be revolutionised, not by cars, trams, buses or ferries, but instead by helicopters. As strange as it may seem, Liverpool was at the forefront of a flurry of interest from planners and politicians who imagined that an age of mass helicopter transit was just around the corner. With their vertical life, small size and ability to land on the roofs of buildings, helicopters seemed ideal for short trips between and even within cities. From 1953, Liverpool’s City Engineer, Henry Hough, began to draw up plans for a network of heliports that would connect seamlessly with buses and form the basis of an integrated ground and sky transit system…After flirting with the idea of using floating pontoons in the Mersey to land helicopters, he settled on plans for a new integrated bus and helicopter station on a patch of bombed ground between Paradise Street and Canning Place.
That is from the new Sam Wetherell book Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain. All those plans ended, however, as the popularity of the car spread amongst Liverpool residents.
More broadly, the book has quite a bit of useful and interesting content, though reading it you would never realize that Liverpool today is a far wealthier place than in times past. It seems always to be in decline. There is also too much “fashionable left-wing jargon,” plus an unwillingness to stress that capital accumulation is what boosts wages. Will books like this one ever be willing to shed those features?
Social media and well-being
Here is a new set of results, by Laura Lemahieu, et.al.:
Abstaining from social media has become a popular digital disconnection strategy of individuals to enhance their well-being. To date, it is unclear whether social media abstinences are truly effective in improving well-being, however, as studies produce inconsistent outcomes. This preregistered systematic review and meta-analysis therefore aims to provide a more precise answer regarding the impact of social media abstinence on well-being. The databases of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Communication Source, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar were searched for studies examining the effect of social media abstinence on three outcomes, namely positive affect, negative affect, and/or life satisfaction. In total, ten studies (N = 4674) were included, allowing an examination of 38 effect sizes across these three outcomes. The analyses revealed no significant effects of social media abstinence interventions on positive affect, negative affect, or life satisfaction. Relationships between social media abstinence duration and the three outcomes were also non-significant. The findings thus suggest that temporarily stepping away from social media may not be the most optimal approach to enhance individual well-being, emphasizing the need for further research on alternative disconnection strategies. Nevertheless, important methodological differences between studies should be considered when interpreting these results.
I thank M. for the pointer.
Saturday assorted links
2. Owen Hatherley interview on Central European emigres to Britain.
3. AGI and the future of warfare.
4. 42 new words added to the OED (NYT).
5. Okie-dokie.
6. Argentina nearing new $20 billion loan from the IMF (FT). “He said the central bank’s gross reserves, which include a loan from China and money backing consumers’ bank deposits, would rise from $26bn to $50bn after deals with the multilateral lenders. Excluding liabilities, reserves are currently about $6bn in the red.”
What I’ve been reading
David Sheff, Yoko: A Biography. An excellent work, I view Yoko as a quite good visual and conceptual artist, a sometimes quite interesting but hard to listen to in any volume musical creator, and overall a pretty stunning woman. Sheff has known Yoko well for decades, so you get a real sense of her from this book, even if you wonder that perhaps not all details are being reported. I learned also that the same guy at Sarah Lawrence dated by Yoko and Sylvia Plath.
Diane Coyle has a new book coming out, The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters.
Reviel Netz, Why the Ancient Greeks Matter: The Problematic Miracle that Was Greece. Uneven but periodically fascinating: “But science was but a small part of the Greek cultural sphere and it would be surprising if the overall contours of Greek cultural life could be explained through science alone. It seems much more promising to consider…what mattered the most to the Greeks themselves. This was their literary legacy: their canon.”
There is Michael M. Rosen, Like Silicon from Clay: What Ancient Jewish Wisdom Can Teach Us About AI.
And Jill Eicher, Mellon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War.
Edward Tenner, Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge: Essays in Unintended Consequences, collects many earlier essays by the master. From The American Philosophical Society Press, a new venture.
And there is James Grant, Friends Until the End: Edmund Burke and Charles Fox in the Age of Revolution.
I’ve also been reading “in the cluster,” trying to better understand what is sometimes called The Hundred Years War, between England and France.
Science podcast with Hrvoje Kukina
Here is the YouTube link. Here is part of the episode summary:
I had a wonderful conversation with Professor Tyler Cowen. We discussed his view of economic growth, the chase for GDP growth, the most underrated risks to global economic stability, and whether capitalism will survive the next century. Other topics included universal basic income, behavioral economics, how cryptocurrencies challenge the traditional role of central banks, and what would it take for cryptocurrencies to become a significant driver of economic growth. We also explored whether Bitcoin’s role as ‘digital gold’ is sustainable or an overhyped narrative, whether cryptocurrencies democratizing finance should prompt nation-states to adopt their own digital currencies, and how to design a regulatory framework that fosters crypto innovation while protecting consumers.
Friday assorted links
1. Guess why Utah has so few restaurants.
2. Invisible College, August, for 18-22 year olds, Cambridge UK.
3. How did Kerala become relatively wealthy?
4. Sharks make clicking sounds? (NYT)
5. Digital Delacroix (NYT).
6. Bari Weiss interviews Leonard Leo.
7. Speculative.
8. Anthropic on how the AIs think. Blog post here.
Stripe economics of AI fellowship
The economics of AI remains surprisingly understudied, even as technical progress in artificial intelligence continues rapidly. The Stripe Economics of AI Fellowship aims to help fill that gap by supporting foundational academic research in the area.
We invite graduate students and early-career researchers who are interested in studying the economics of AI to apply, regardless of prior experience. Fellows receive a grant of at least $10k, participate in conferences with leading economists and technologists, and have the potential to access unique data via Stripe and its customers. Our initial cohort will include 15-20 fellows, and will form the foundation of a community at the bleeding edge of economic research.
The link has further information, here is the tweet thread from the excellent Basil Halperin.