54. When to Trust Big Pharma in the Covid-19 Battle w/ Derek Lowe

Big pharma is out for big pharma, but that doesn’t mean we don’t benefit from drugs, vaccines and treatments – AIDS was a death sentence until pharma came up with drugs called protease inhibitors that allowed people with HIV to live out their lives. 

Now there’s Paxlovid - a protease inhibitor to fight Covid-19. The biggest downside of this drug is there isn’t enough of it to go around. 

I’ll be talking about that drug and more with medicinal chemist Derek Lowe, who is the author of Science Magazine’s In the Pipeline blog. It’s a wonderful, critical, objective look at the science of pharmaceuticals. The bottom line is you don’t ever have to blindly trust anyone to tell you a drug works. What matters is that they can show how drugs work – and provide reproducible data. 

“Follow the Science" is produced, written, and hosted by Faye Flam, with funding by the Society for Professional Journalists. Today’s episode was edited by Seth Gliksman with music by Kyle Imperatore. If you’d like to hear more "Follow the Science," please like, follow, and subscribe!