Via Peggy Tierney’s Tweet , The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle dissects the problem of creating new treatments in our broken medical research system in the article “No Refills”. Her article goes beyond finger-pointing at the FDA or pharmaceutical companies and tackles some of the stickiest problems.

She discusses issues like internal R&D investment at pharmaceutical companies, the trend of dwindling numbers of New Molecular Entities (NMEs) issued, and the fact that the “low-hanging fruit” of drug targets for more simple diseases have been reached, leaving the more difficult and more complex diseases to treat.

McArdle ends on a hopeful note encouraging the players to break down the barriers and to find new innovations:

But the way that all these things are intertwined might actually make it easier, rather than harder, to boost our research output: any change has ripple effects. If Big Pharma can look outside its own walls more, and if the FDA can reinvent itself, the whole landscape may well alter.

Read “No Refills” here.