[ajross]

And vaccines. Those two alone account for some huge chunk of our wins against death. The upthread posters are making a sorta valid point: the low hanging fruit has been picked, and recent innovations are more incremental. And that's true enough, though I agree that cynicism isn't the right response.

[randcraw]

Statins are only about 20 years old. As are hypertensive drugs. Both have had clear impacts on longevity.

Can we be so sure that the next generation of superdrug won't give rise to a comparable revolution in reducing risk? I'm not, and I work in the pharma industry.

True, I'm not especially upbeat about the prospects of jobs here or the survival of individual pharma companies (oft mismanaged, IMO). But I do believe major innovations are on the horizon and may have major impacts, bigger than the aforementioned statins.

Gene therapy, pluripotent cell line therapy, immune system driven therapy -- these all have stunning potential on a wide range of targets. Yes, the future of traditional small molecule drugs is cloudy. But the next generation of genomics and biologics may blow your socks off.