四十年拿不下来的靶点被拿下了。胰腺癌病人多活半年，代价是一个月三万九千八百美元。

Last week, America approved a new drug for pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest cancers to treat. For decades there has been almost no good news.

Before this, median survival after diagnosis was under seven months.

Median means half of all patients do not live past that point.

With the new drug, that number becomes thirteen months.

The difference is half a year.

Now, why this drug was so hard to make.

There is a protein in the body that governs whether cells keep growing.

Once it breaks, it makes cells go on growing without stopping.

In pancreatic cancer, over ninety percent of patients have this same broken protein.

Scientists knew long ago that if you could pin it down, you had a chance.

The problem was that you could not pin it down.

Its surface is too smooth. A drug gets no grip.

So the medical world gave it a nickname: the undruggable target.

Now someone has pinned it down.

And it is not an injection. It is one tablet a day, taken at home.

There are side effects, and they are not minor.

More than eighty-six percent of patients get a skin rash.

But what is really worth comparing is whether patients can keep going.

Chemotherapy is so heavy that many people give up partway.

On this drug, far fewer people stop treatment, and they are in less pain.

Up to this point, it is the best piece of news in decades.

Then comes the price.

One month of the drug: thirty-nine thousand eight hundred dollars.

One month, not one year.

The drug is sitting there. Whether you can get it is a separate question.

Think about it:

If a drug can save people but many cannot afford it, does it count as good news?