664. Are Thousands of Medical Cures Hiding in Plain Sight?
2/20/202652 min
Existing drugs can sometimes be repurposed to treat rare diseases. But making that match can be hard — and the financial incentives are weak. Guest host Steve Levitt tries to solve the puzzle.
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SOURCES:
- Chris Snyder, professor of economics at Dartmouth College.
- David Fajgenbaum, co-founder and president of Every Cure, physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.
- Heather Stone, health science policy analyst at the Food & Drug Administration.
- Sarrin Chethik, senior policy analyst at the Market Shaping Accelerator.
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RESOURCES:
- Chasing My Cure: A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope into Action; A Memoir, by David Fajgenbaum (2019).
- Strong Medicine: Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases, by Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster (2016).
- Market Shaping Accelerator.
- CURE ID Registry.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsStephen Dubner· Host0:00
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Heather Stone· Guest1:09
It's basically a brain-eating amoeba. They don't really know how it's transmitted, probably through some sort of soil exposure. It causes encephalitis, which is swelling in parts of the brain. It can kill you in relatively short order. It's extremely rare, and so there's been very little study of it.
Stephen Dubner· Host1:28
That is Heather Stone. She's