Pharmaceuticals: from molecules to medicine

摘要

How many tablets have you taken this week? Whether it is for pain relief, high blood pressure or diabetes, Britons are taking more medicines than ever before - in 2012 over one billion prescription items were dispensed, many of them in tablet form. Coupled with over-the-counter medicines, it is estimated that the average person will swallow 40, 000 pills over their lifetime, an average of more than one a day. It is also big business - the pharmaceutical industry ranks second only to finance in terms of its contribution to the UK economy. Mathematical pharmaceutical research alone added ￡16 billion to the country's coffers in 2010.