TIME EUROPE
January 15, 2000, Vol. 157 No. 2
The Future of Drugs
By PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT
In an age in which so much of medical science is utterly incomprehensible — even to other scientists — it's comforting to remind ourselves from time to time that a lot of what passes for modern medicine is simply the refinement and repackaging of ancient remedies. Digitalis from foxglove. Opiates from poppies. Aspirin from the bark of willow trees. Even now, nearly 60% of the best-selling prescription drugs in America's pharmacies are based on compounds taken directly from Mother Nature's well-stocked armamentarium. It's as if there were a bright, healing thread running from the medicine bags of shamans and witch doctors to today's drugs for cancer, Alzheimer's and heart disease.
But that's about to change. With the mapping of the genome — the twisted double strand of DNA that carries the instructions for making every cell in the human body — the process by which new drugs are developed is being turned upside down. Trial and error, which is how medicines have been discovered for the past 100 years (and for millenniums before that), is yielding to drugs by design. Increasingly scientists, armed with blueprints for our genes, can identify the individual molecules that make us susceptible to a particular disease. With that information — and some high-speed silicon-age machinery — they can build new molecules that home in on their targets like well-aimed arrows.
How will this change our lives? The drugs we take? The pains we suffer? The diseases that finally do us in? The answers are as surprising as the science that is producing them. In the pages that follow we will try to give you a glimpse of the future by looking over the shoulders of the scientists who are searching — both genetically and the old-fashioned way — for tomorrow's miracle drugs. And in our first A to Z guide to the year in medicine, we will review the advances and setbacks — from aids cocktails to zinc supplements — that made 2000 such a remarkable year for patients and doctors alike.
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COVER STORY
Special Report: The Future of Medicine
With the mapping of the human genome the process by which new drugs are developed is being turned upside down. These drugs will also change our lives
Brave New Pharmacy
Using high-speed robots and the secrets of the human genome, scientists are changing forever the way they discover new medicine
The Hunt for Cures
Genetic information could lead to treatments for everything from AIDS to obesity
EUROPE
Prague Winter
When Jiri Hodac was named director of state television, Czech journalists saw a return to government meddling in the media
See Vous in Court
France is the latest nation to join the litigation game
Going up in Smoke
Switzerland, land of luxury watches and bank secrecy, has a new growth industry: marijuana
UNITED STATES
The True Blue Bush Cabinet
Its ethnic and gender balance is correct, but can a divided nation deal with the superconservative bent?
BUSINESS
Transparency has its Price
Executives at many German companies are finding it hard to adjust to the more rigorous financial disclosure required by global investors
On Spreading the Word
When it comes to selling merchandise, word-of-mouth marketing may be a company's best weapon
Essay: Meat Matters
Critics of industrialized farming may be forgetting about world hunger, writes TIME's Rod Usher
THE ARTS
Rebel with a Cause
The real-lifestory of an anti-Mafia activist in Sicily makes for a handsome film with a political message
The Upmarketeer's Tale
Bernard Arnault built his house by selling at deluxe prices and in his book he's still giving nothing away
The Art of Noise
For Europe's freely improvised music, the only rule is no rule
DEPARTMENTS
Techwatch
World Watch
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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