Biotechnology in the Time of COVID-19: Commentaries from the Front Line

by Jeremy M. Levin

Not that pharma’s success in creating therapies for less prevalent diseases hasn’t created enormous medical benefits. Drug companies have made great progress in treating late-stage cancers; we can now save children who, just a few years ago, would have been doomed by conditions like cystic fibrosis. But these advances haven’t been generally lauded. Reputationally, the drug industry has never been seen so negatively4. The public at large are subject to near-constant rhetoric about high drug prices and high-priced lobbyists—but, one result of pharma’s shift from large-population medicines is that only a few consumers see the benefit of much of the industry’s R&D output today.