This book, based on published studies, takes a unique perspective on the 30-year collapse of pharmaceutical industry productivity in the search for small molecule “magic bullet” interventions. The relentless escalation of inflation-adjusted cost per approved medicine in the United States — from $200 million in 1950 to $1.2 billion in 2010 — has driven industry giants to, at best, slavish imitation in drug design, and at worst, abandonment of research and embracing of widespread fraud in consumer marketing.The book adapts formalism across a number of disciplines to...