Successfully translating scientific discoveries requires a sense of urgency, which some disease foundations seem to have, and many big pharmas appear to need. Patients waiting expectantly for medical research to produce important new cures are finding bad news almost everywhere they turn.

Elizabeth Warren is again at the center of a political controversy. Despite her insistence that she is part Cherokee, based upon “family lore” and her observation that some in her family had “high cheekbones like all the Indians do,” she has failed to produce any concrete evidence to substantiate her claim.

The new study provides no conclusive proof one way or the other of the effect of the Massachusetts reform on medical bankruptcies.

Patients who take a close look at medical science in search of treatments are often appalled by what they discover. On the one hand, there's academic research, a self-contained and self-absorbed universe of its own where data may be internally consistent (on a good day) and robustly reproducible, yet often has little relevance to real-world clinical conditions.

Drug importation would harm Americans' health and jeopardize future developments in medical science.

Of the many factors that make improving the health system difficult, few challenges are greater than the misty-eyed recollection – often from genuinely distinguished practitioners – of how great things used to be.  Doctors were highly regarded authority figures, pure and beloved, while patients were meek and grateful in the presence of such brilliance and expertise.

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) president Arthur C. Brooks has announced that AEI scholar Leon R. Kass, M.D., is the recipient of AEI’s 2012 Irving Kristol Award. Dr. Kass will receive the award and deliver the Irving Kristol Lecture at AEI’s annual dinner on Wednesday, May 2, 2012, at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps it's the sweet California air, but the pervasive (though not universal) pessimism in biopharma these days is really bumming me out.  Consequently, I'd like to discuss three potential responses to difficult industry problems.