Paul Howard: What policymakers can learn from a $21 billion failure

William Osler, one of the founding faculty members at Johns Hopkins Medical School, once remarked: “If it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science and not an art.” A century later, medicine is, despite its technical prowess, in many ways still an art — albeit an expensive one.

Pfizer learned that lesson the hard way in early December, when they halted development of their much anticipated “good cholesterol” boosting drug, torcetrapib. A late-stage clinical trial revealed excess deaths and cardiovascular problems in patients taking the drug together with Lipitor, compared to Lipitor alone.