i don't know what "HUMIRA was created using phage display technology resulting in an antibody with human-derived heavy and light chain variable regions and human lgG1:k constant regions. This means, it resembles antibodies normally found in the body" means. but i do know two things:

1) humira didn't exist four years ago.

2) without it i would've killed myself by now.  

biology. is where it's at.

biological and medical research is wildly inefficient right now; instead of pushing the envelope (and the envelope <i> can </i> be pushed) the companies of big pharma are rushing 'me too' drugs to market - after changing the color of the pill from blue to purple - under new patents in order to protect their monopolies - instead of investing money in r&d, they drop a fraction of the money on marketing. and because of pharma's drug reps and CME (continuing medical education, put on and paid for by big pharma) and direct to consumer advertising the doctors and the public fall for it - and some physicians script the brand new drug for 100x the cost of the drug that just went off patent, even though they are both just as safe and just as effective - or worse, sometimes the older drug is safer and / or more effective.

our government? complicit. we taxpayers fund research through grants to university scientists. the university transfers the patent to a drug company and then the public ends up paying drastically inflated prices - consider the taxpayers assumed much of the risk of intial research.

two books, 'the truth about drug companies' and 'university inc.' - when read together present a pretty damning indictment of our research system - but they also give me hope, 'cus all of the problems presented are fixable. and if this system is still turning out the occasional new molecular entity, or two, that do nifty stuff like effectively control crohn's? well, we ain't running out of ideas.