In Search of Cure for Cancer

Anything Gladwell's writes is pure "poetry". His new essay on drug development - cure for cancer is fascinating with all the quintessential "Gladwellian Traits". Answer to two important questions:

1. Why it's so difficult to find a cure for cancer?
""In the early eighties, I looked into how Merck and Pfizer went about drug discovery," Chen recalls. "How many compounds are they using? Are they doing the best they can? And I come up with an incredible number. It turns out that mankind had, at this point, made tens of millions of compounds. But Pfizer was screening only six hundred thousand compounds, and Merck even fewer, about five hundred thousand. How could they screen for drugs and use only five hundred thousand, when mankind has already made so many more?""

2. What is the emotional state of scientists and researchers when they at the brink of finding that miracle drug? Forget the stock prices, monetary rewards, fame et al but just the emotional pleasure of finding something that could save millions of lives.
"Bahcall called back the management team for a special meeting. He gave the floor to Jacobson. "Eric was, like, 'Well, you know we've got this melanoma trial,' " Bahcall began, "and it took a moment to jog people's memories, because we'd all been so focussed on Crohn's disease and the psoriasis trials. And Eric said, 'Well, we got the results. The drug worked! It was a positive trial!' " One person slammed the table, stood up, and hollered. Others peppered Eric with questions. "Eric said, 'Well, the group analyzing the data is trying to disprove it, and they can't disprove it.' And he said, 'The consultant handed me the data on Wednesday morning, and she said it was boinking good.' And everyone said, 'What?' Because Eric is the sweetest guy, who never swears. A bad word cannot cross his lips. Everyone started yelling, 'What? What? What did she say, Eric? Eric! Eric! Say it! Say it!' "

Bahcall contacted Synta's board of directors. Two days later, he sent out a company-wide e-mail saying that there would be a meeting that afternoon. At four o'clock, all hundred and thirty employees trooped into the building's lobby. Jacobson stood up. "So the lights go down," Bahcall continued. "Clinical guys, when they present data, tend to do it in a very bottoms-up way: this is the disease population, this is the treatment, and this is the drug, and this is what was randomized, and this is the demographic, and this is the patient pool, and this is who had toenail fungus, and this is who was Jewish. They go on and on and on, and all anyone wants is, Show us the fucking Kaplan-Meier! Finally he said, 'All right, now we can get to the efficacy.' It gets really silent in the room. He clicks the slide. The two lines separate out beautifully—and a gasp goes out, across a hundred and thirty people. Eric starts to continue, and one person goes like this"—Bahcall started clapping slowly—"and then a couple of people joined in, and then soon the whole room is just going like this—clap, clap, clap. There were tears. We all realized that our lives had changed, the lives of patients had changed, the way of treating the disease had changed. In that moment, everyone realized that this little company of a hundred and thirty people had a chance to win. We had a drug that worked, in a disease where nothing worked. That was the single most moving five minutes of all my years at Synta."

What the heck is Kaplan-Meier? - here.