The Good Pharma manifesto
Medicine is the most consequential industry most people never read about.
- I
Everyone takes the medicine. Almost no one knows the story.
Most of us can name the people who run the biggest technology companies. Far fewer can name the people who run the companies that make the medicines we take. The drugs in our cabinets have histories as dramatic as any startup's, and they almost never get told.
- II
A discovery is not yet a medicine.
The insulin found in Toronto in 1921 reached patients because a chemist in Indianapolis learned to make it the same way twice. A good story about medicine follows the whole path: the science, the money, the manufacturing, the regulators and the patients, because that is where the outcome is decided.
- III
We are optimistic about biology, not about any company.
Our optimism is about discovery and what medicine can become. It is not a promise to admire the industry. The same history that gave us insulin and penicillin also gave us thalidomide and the opioid crisis, and Good Pharma tells both.
- IV
Rigour and clarity are not opposites.
We read the papers, the filings and the archives, and we name the molecule, the dose, the trial and the date. Then we explain it so that someone without a medical degree can follow every step.
- V
Stories are made by people.
Behind every medicine is someone who took a risk: a scientist with an unfashionable idea, a founder with a decade-long bet, a patient who volunteered for the first dose. We tell their stories by name.
Deeya Kotecha, creator of Good Pharma