One of the unpleasant things I do as a consultant is recommend that pharmaceutical firms halt the production of uneconomical new medicines. I'm a drug killer.

If American voters hand Barack Obama the presidency and a filibuster-proof Democratic Congress, I'll be doing a lot more of this unhappy work.

Say a biotech company is developing a new drug for breast cancer. My consulting firm, Objective Insights, looks at the financial value of the project. If the expected value--probability-adjusted value--of the project is negative, we suggest discontinuing development. Often, millions of dollars have already been spent.

A lot of new medicines are tossed into the trash for reasons that have nothing to do with safety...  full article