Anti-Amyloids and Antichrist

Some thoughts on Peter Thiel's view of the beta-amyloid hypothesis as a lens for understanding the messy, slow cost of figuring out how to make drugs for complex diseases.

Last May, during a conversation with Ross Douthat, Peter Thiel turned his gaze toward the pharmaceutical industry and delivered a verdict characteristic of his specific brand of eschatological libertarianism. “If we look at biotech, something like dementia, Alzheimer’s - we’ve made zero progress in forty to fifty years,” he said. “People are completely …