Opinion: Fast science can be good science, even more so when lives are at stake
Drug development has been conducted at the same slow and incremental pace for so long that some have worried that speeding it up would mean cutting corners and sacrificing patient safety or the accuracy of data collected.
Then along came the Covid-19 pandemic. It raised the stakes and challenged the global health care and scientific communities to reimagine traditional development timelines. The results have saved lives, exceeded expectations and, importantly, presented guidance that can be applied not just to future pandemics but also to devastating diseases that affect people every day. Life-threatening and debilitating diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases could benefit immensely from this type of disruption.
