"It was always a higher risk development program largely because no drug has ever been approved for this impulse control disorder, though we did think it had a reasonable chance for success," Jeff Raser, senior vice president and co-founder of Somaxon, told the San Diego Union-Tribune. "It's a disappointment."

How much did the gamble cost? The usual procedure is to develop some preliminary criteria to screen psychoactive agents, say, a CAT scan of the brain of gamblers showing an enhanced activity in the prefrontal cortex. Animal proxies are preferred for this stage, of course, but suppose a list of 100 chemicals is found to have an effect, which are screened for toxicology on the usual suspects: mice, pigs, green monkeys. Given the costs of these animals ($100-$1000 for unusual mice, more for pigs and monkeys) this can run up a bill in the millions. Usually 10% or less potential drugs make it to the next stage, so by the time we get to human trials  about $10 million has been spent on animal studies. The red tape involved in human studies is enormous, so one has to assume something like $100 million has been spent up through human screening. Then comes the FDA approval, and that can easily eat up another few hundred million.  If only 10% that make it through screening, perhaps only 1% make it to FDA approval, so every new drug on the market represents a billion or so dollars gambled, er, invested.  Something worth thinking about the next time you see your bill at the pharmacy.

But of course, it was bound to fail.  The result was completely predictable from Metaphysics.

"Metaphysics?!" you ask.

Of course. Just as I have argued that the limitations and failures of modern theoretical physics are primarily metaphysical, so also the failure of pharmaceutical companies to turn a profit are metaphysical. (I would even argue, but demur today, that metaphysics determines whether the war in Iraq is a failure or a success, and therefore controls the spending on the war.)  Metaphysics is a neglected subject, one that used to be part of a well-rounded curriculum. It would have kept Somaxon out of bankruptcy, or at least, discouraged hostile takeover bids.

The metaphysics is so simple as to appear simplistic: non-material problems have non-material causes, material problems have have material causes, and searching for material causes to non-material problems is a waste of time and money. Now before we go further, let me say that I am not advocating a dualistic universe, where mind and body inhabit different planes. That would be the opposite error of gnosticism, which attempts to separate what God has bound together. Just as a bad habit becomes an accursed addiction becomes a wasting disease, there are real  interactions, vicious cycles relating the body and the soul. As a wise counsellor once said to me, "it is no use counselling a drunk while he is drunk", so often the material effects of immaterial problems have to be addressed as well. But the root causes of drunkenness are not, at the core, material. Otherwise the government-funded and psychiatrist-approved alcoholism clinics would have a better track record than AA. (Or at the least the AA in it's prime 20 years ago.)  The evidence that AA works is proof that immaterial cures are better for immaterial problems.

Yet the Materialist Century had a profound effect on us, not only convincing us of the inevitable progress of materialist science and materialist solutions, but the diminishing expectations of the same. When Valium hit the market in the 60's we were all convinced we had defeated depression forever. I know of mothers who carried it in their purses and dispensed it to their teenagers at the slightest sign of ennui. It did not, by and large, reduce the population of depressed teenagers, though it did introduce us to a pill-popping culture and the death of Elvis. But by the time Prozac hit the market 30 years later, we didn't expect nirvana, we just wanted to "function" a little better. My colleague at Novartis liked to tell me that Prozac was a best-seller only in the US, it was sleeping pills in Europe because Americans still wanted to work when they were depressed, while Europeans just wanted to sleep.  An observation that goes a long way in explaining the differences across the Atlantic divide. And now we are told not to give anti-depressants to teenagers because it increased the suicide rate.  Yet another, metaphysically obvious, result.

"Wait a minute!", you may object, "you only said that you can't cure immaterial problems with material solutions, not that it would make things worse."

Well, that is the corollary to the above observation. In philosophy it is known as the "Hedonistic Paradox", that those who search for pleasure are never satisfied. Addictions are called addictions because left alone the system gets worse, not better. In control theory it is called positive feedback, a solution that drives the system into the rails. Sort of like the prankster who cross-wired the thermostats in the offices of two colleagues he didn't like. When one felt cold he turned up the other's temperature which caused the other to turn down his.  Addicts are cross-wired, so that apparent relief is actually pain, and apparent pain is actually relief. To truly find satisfaction, to find pleasure that is greater than anything previously experienced, one must not seek it, in fact, one must avoid it altogether. Thus a pill to control depression is nearly guaranteed to cause it, just as a drink to forget embarrassment is almost certain to increase it. It has been my observation that those who had the wildest college experience had the most frustrated marriage, and those who used their attraction in their youth had little to offer in middle age.

"So is there no cure for depression, for gambling?"  On the contrary, AA reports a large success rate applying non-material cures for non-material problems including gambling. There are many such "12-step groups" attempting the same formula for other non-material problems, though I have not heard of any such attempt to solve, say, cystic fibrosis in this fashion.

"But what about all those heroin addicts that are taking methadone to control their addictions? We know there are opiate receptors in the brain, why shouldn't there be a similar drug for gambling addiction?" 

Well to begin with, heroin addiction is an addiction to a substance, a material, and therefore it is reasonable to expect some other material to stop it. But gambling is an addiction to an action, an immaterial process. Even if we outlawed all bookies, all internet gambling, and jailed all professional athletes who engage in it, we would not necessarily stop you from joining the office "final four betting pool".  Immaterial things are difficult to control with material limits. Of course, Sharia law says that theft is to be punished by chopping off the hand, or adultery caught before the act is to be punished by castration, actions that certainly target the material means by which the behavior is accomplished. But what would you do for a gambling addict? Cut out his eyes? Lobotomize his brain?

"That's not a fair comparison", you may say, "because we aren't trying to stop betting pools, we're trying to stop self-destructive, compulsive, dangerous gambling addictions. Why shouldn't that kind of addiction be qualitatively different, sort of like an opiate receptor in the brain?"

Okay, suppose it is. Suppose we do CAT scans or PET scans of the brains of gambling addicts and find a consistent and reliable difference. Suppose even further that we have the skill to irradiate said centers of the brain and remove the neurons that are stimulated by idiotic billboards of gold coins stacked to the roof. Sort of a selective lobotomy that makes them completely uninterested in vacations to Las Vegas. Would this solve the gambling addicts problem?

Remember now, that these are the same neurologists who told us that depressed patients had a serious lack of serotonin in the the brain, so that by stopping the destruction of serotonin, the brain would have elevated levels of this neurotransmitter and we could banish depression forever. As we discussed above, Zoloft and Prozac, two popular "selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors" cause 50% more suicides in teenagers, if we can believe the numbers from the same pharmaceutical companies that suppressed these stats for 13 years.  What went wrong? The problem was to confuse correlation with causation. As I often illustrate, lipstick use is highly correlated with breast cancer, raising the risk an astonishing 100% over the general population, but neither causes the other. The putative hyperactive brain neurons could as well be produced by the addiction, rather than causing it, and cutting them out could easily create a worse situation, as with teenage suicide, than before.

"But you're arguing hypotheticals. Surely it is just as likely that it really works, that such selective lobotomies stop addiction. Wouldn't that be worth finding out? Even if no one made a profit on it?"

Okay, let's grant you this second request. What kind of world would we live in if we could probe the brain and selectively remove addictive brain centers? Let's even suppose that we have "selective reuptake inhibitors" that do this job chemically, without surgery. What kind of world would that produce? Well if it worked on gambling, would it work on sexual addictions? Then we could use it to conduct painless genocide. Or how about suicide bombers, could we stop addiction to religion? Then we could use it on Richard Dawkins. How about addictions to pornography, snuff movies, or Britney Spears for heaven's sake? Well then we are into mind control, crowd management, directing pop culture.  Like the utopian novel Brave New World, where the populace was controlled with a pleasure-inducing drug, "Soma", we would now live in the dystopian Braver New World, where the populace would be controlled by a pleasure-denying drug.  Is this the society you want?

"But you haven't proved that anti-Soma was impossible, you only only proved it was undesirable!  How do you know that no pharmaceutical company would ever find such a drug?"

Because God said "fiat lux". A universe that has light cannot have impenetrable darkness. A universe that has meaning cannot have a God of Chance. A universe that contains hope cannot be made by the God of Despair. And a materialist universe can have no other. It would make nonsense of metaphysics, which is to say, it would make nonsense of every philosophy and religion ever discussed in the past 3 millennia to have discovered an anti-Soma drug, which would eliminate the need for God, for philosophy, for love, for life itself.

"So why did they even try?"

Their name says it all.