[JimWhitton]

I just finished The Billion Dollar Molecule by Barry Werth, which tells the true story of a start-up pharmaceutical company trying to create an anti-AIDS drug in the late 80’s. The company’s guiding spirit, Joshua Boger, is a pioneer in the field of structure-based drug design. Boger comes across as brilliant and driven and yet cheerfully optimistic, not only a great scientist but also a superb salesman—both a truly selfish man and a pretty nice guy. Imagine Steve Jobs without the temper tantrums.

“Boger’s equable demeanor, his humor, his arrogance, his confidence in negotiations, all derive from the central theme of his own competence. Believing that he’s right and that others—even nature itself—will eventually come around gives him a consistently placid air. Seldom does he show strain or annoyance without also joking about it.”

When he started his company, Vertex, Boger set out to create a corporate culture of enlightened self-interest. He “wanted people who were unbowed by competition; people who, like himself, insisted upon being the best. He wanted an orgy of bristling, militantly selfish creativity. . .”

Boger is suspicious of scientists who claim to create life-saving drugs for altruistic motives. Engaging in science is too difficult, he believes, for people whose only goal is to help rid man of the burden of disease. Scientists do what they do because they’re certain it can be done, and to prove to themselves and the world that they can do it first. Only “backbreaking science and unblemished greed would conquer AIDS.”

“For me,” Boger said, “the best motivation for going into AIDS  . . . is that we think we can make a difference. The science took us there. The opportunity took us there, which I think is a lot more honest than getting in either because we wanted to make a lot of money or because we wanted to save the world.”

I’m now reading the sequel, The Antidote, which catches up with Boger and the gang twenty years later.

[Author]

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