In July 2006, The New York Times sent young reporter Alex Berenson to Pfizer to interview me about the company’s future R&D prospects. Given its large R&D budget, it was natural to use Pfizer as a barometer of the pharmaceutical industry, which was in the midst of a productivity slump. In the 1990s, the Food and Drug Administration approved a total of 311 new medicines. However, despite far greater investments in R&D, the industry received only 235 approvals over the next decade. At the time, industry skeptics felt this was the new norm.
However, I had a different view. In the 2000s, the industry was undergoing a major transformation. Based on the remarkable advances being made in the understanding of the causes of diseases thanks to the unraveling of the human genome, along with the appreciation of the potential of drugs outside of small molecules like antibodies and therapeutic vaccines, it was apparent that the pharmaceutical industry was on the cusp of a productivity surge. We were on the verge of a new age in drug discovery that would make big advances in treating cancer, diabetes, and other debilitating conditions.
I suspect that Berenson felt I was a bit naïve in my views. He (or his editors) titled his article “Dr. Optimistic: A Pfizer Scientist Sees Research Dividends Ahead.”
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