# Francis Collins: We need better drugs -- now

Today we know the molecular cause of 4,000 diseases, but treatments are available for only 250 of them. So what’s taking so long? Geneticist and physician Francis Collins explains why systematic drug discovery is imperative, even for rare and complex diseases, and offers a few solutions -- like teaching old drugs new tricks.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2013
- Runtime: 14 min
- By: TED.com
- Genres: Education, Science
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/FrancisCollins_2012P)
- Licence or status: [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) (as the archive states it)
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/FrancisCollins_2012P?play=1)