Synopses & Reviews
Never before have two revolutions with so much potential to save and prolong human life occurred simultaneously. The converging, synergistic power of the biochemical and digital revolutions now allows us to read every letter of lifes code, create precisely targeted drugs to control it, and tailor their use to individual patients. Cancer, diabetes, Alzheimers and countless other killers can be vanquishedif we make full use of the tools of modern drug design and allow doctors the use of modern data gathering and analytical tools when prescribing drugs to their patients.
But Washington stands in the way, clinging to outdated drug-approval protocols developed decades ago during medicines long battle with the infectious epidemics of the past. Peter Huber, an expert in science, technology, and public policy, demonstrates why Washingtons one-size-fits-all drug policies cant deal with diseases rooted in the complex molecular diversity of human bodies. Washington is ill-equipped to handle the torrents of data that now propel the advance of molecular medicine and is reluctant to embrace the statistical methods of the digital age that can. Obsolete economic policies, often rationalized as cost-saving measures, stifle innovation and suppress investment in the medicine that can provide the best cures at the lowest cost.
In the 1980s, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence, until the FDA loosened its throttling grip and began streamlining and accelerating approval of life-saving drugs. The Cure in the Code shows patients, doctors, investors, and policy makers what we must now do to capture the full life-saving and cost-saving potential of the revolution in molecular medicine. America has to choose. At stake for America is the power to lead the world in mastering the most free, fecund, competitive, dynamic, and intelligent natural resource on the planetthe molecular code that spawns human life and controls our health.
Review
[An] urgent, compelling account of how 21st-century medicine is being hampered by a regulatory regime built for the science of the 20th century.”
Wall Street Journal
[An] exciting and authoritative review of accelerating advances in personalized medicine.”
Barrons
Spotlighting an area where federal laws and regulations lag far behind technological innovation, the author, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow, maintains that medicines rapidly developing capacity to decode individual human genomes and tailor patients treatments accordingly as with breast cancer is being hindered by...outdated drug-approval protocols developed decades ago during medicines long battle with the infectious epidemics of the past.”
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
[Huber is] one of the few men walking the Earth who could write a book about FDA reform that is not only profitable but pleasurable to read. The book is exciting, in that it suggests possibilities for significant improvements in our ability to treat terrifying diseases in the near future; but it is also depressing, because its sophisticated analysis in flying so far above regulation-deregulation and government-market binaries that dominate so many of our policy debates cannot help but draw ones attention to the intellectual poverty of Washingtons practically pre-Copernican approach to important policy decisions.... The book is sprinkled liberally with sentences that are thought-provoking gems, each worthy of an essay of its own.... [A] very rich book.”
National Review
Our ability to read the genetic code heralds a transformation of modern medicine. Yet many potential medical miracles remain throttled
.[Hubers] ardor for invigorating pharmaceutical progress is apparent on every page.”
Booklist
Intriguing.”
Kirkus Reviews
A provocative, optimistic look at modern medicine
Hubers challenge is sure to spark controversy as the U.S. adapts to the Affordable Care Act.”
Publishers Weekly
A must read for physicians, patients, biotech investors, and healthcare politicians, The Cure in the Code is the most important policy book of the decade, and it could only have been written by Peter Huber, a polymathic master of both the deadly menace and huge promise of bioscience, and scathing critic of the blindness of healthcare bureaucracy.”
George Gilder, author of Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism
A thoughtful and compelling account of how the federal governments current regulatory science is not only outdated, but risks hampering scientific efforts to combat diseases at the molecular level. Marshaling insights from medicine, law, and economics, Huber makes an urgent case for how to improve the drug and therapy regulatory system to better equip physicians with innovative treatments that meet critical patient needs.”
Tom Coburn, M.D., United States Senator from Oklahoma
Peter Huber is one of only a handful of public intellectuals with a deep understanding of science, economics, and the law. In The Cure in the Code, Huber explains scientific advances in molecular biology and genetic engineering, the economics of pharmaceuticals and medicine, and the intersection of all of these with FDA law and policy. This is a key guide to the promise of personalized medicinepersonalized down to the genetic leveland also to the policies that can deliver that promise.”
Alex Tabarrok, Professor and Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics, George Mason University
Peter Huber has eloquently portrayed the transition of medicine from art to science in the 21st century. But The Cure in the Code offers much more as he illuminates the changes that must occur in the research, regulatory, reimbursement ecosystem if the promise of cures is to be fulfilled.”
Andrew von Eschenbach, Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2005-2009)
Synopsis
Medicine has become a true information industry, with drug designers able to read every molecular letter of lifes code DNA and create miracle drugs to control it. Our understanding of DNA has advanced to the point that we can now build a medical system tailored to individuals. But these advances in science will not automatically translate to better patient care, argues Manhattan Institute senior fellow Peter Huber. Now that medicine takes place on the molecular level, massive public health initiatives designed to attack infectious diseases are no longer necessary, and government intervention has instead become a burden: stifling innovation and strangling industries with bureaucracy. Further, due to its reluctance to embrace the statistical methods of the information age, Washington is ill-equipped to determine which drugs are safe and effective for which patients.
In The Cure in the Code, Huber demonstrates convincingly that we are at the beginning of a medical revolution with the potential to dramatically improve the length and quality of our livesbut only if we abandon a regulatory framework that's a relic of the past.
About the Author
Peter Huber is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he specializes in issues of drug development, energy, technology, and the law, and is also a partner at the law firm of Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans and Figel. He lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.