Thoughts

On breakthroughs.

June 23, 2003

“It’s a dream of a lifetime,” said Julian Adams, a chemist at a company that is now part of Takeda Pharmaceuticals. He was eight years into working on a drug, Velcade, that would, in a milestone achievement, become the first medication in a decade to be approved for fighting a blood cancer called multiple myeloma. (Today Velcade is a common chemotherapy medicine.) “Behind every breakthrough drug is a handful of unknown geniuses who conjured

up what no one had dreamed of before,” wrote Forbes’ Robert Langreth and Zina Moukheiber. “Drugmakers like to brag about the latest high-tech tools . . . and how they will lead to a boatload of breakthroughs. In reality, the difference between spectacular success and abject failure can come down to a little luck and a few dedicated inventors toiling behind the scenes. These medical Merlins have the rare combination of genius, drive and faith needed to surmount dismal odds.”

“Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” —Archimedes “We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.” —Samuel Smiles “Nothing is worth discovering except that which has not existed.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin “That is the essence of science: Ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.” —Jacob Bronowski “We have discovered the secret of life!” —Francis Crick “A theory can be proved by experiment, but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.” —Albert Einstein “It may be a weed instead of a fish that, after all my labor, I may at last pull up.” —Michael Faraday “The physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.” —Robert J. Oppenheimer “I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams.” —Jonas Salk “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” —Marcel Proust “There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before.” —Isaac Asimov “It is not only by the questions we have answered that progress may be measured, but also by those we are still asking.” —Freda Adler “All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.” —Edward Gibbon “The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.” —Elbert Hubbard “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” —Jeremiah 33:3

SOURCES: THE ASCENT OF MAN, BY JACOB BRONOWSKI; COLLECTIO, BY POPPUS ALEXANDER; SELF-HELP, BY SAMUEL SMILES; LA VISION DU PASSÉ, BY PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN; THE DOUBLE HELIX, BY JAMES WATSON; THE HARVEST OF A QUIET EYE, BY ALAN MACKAY; SISTERS IN CRIME, BY FREDA ADLER; DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, BY EDWARD GIBBON; ADDING A DIMENSION, BY ISAAC ASIMOV.