Of every cancer drug that enters human trials, about 3% will ever reach patients.
These are not random molecules. Each one survived years of screening and testing. The best the industry can produce. And 97% fail.
I don't think we're bad at drug development. I think we've built an extraordinarily sophisticated system for solving the wrong problem.
I wrote about which problem, and why the industry can't stop solving it: The Tyranny of the Magic Bullet.