A spanner in the works
Most drugs work by breaking or stopping something, rather than by making something faster or better
If you look at the list of drugs we have approved and available, from the early plant-derived compounds like digitalis and morphine, through aspirin and antibiotics to the very latest therapies, you will see drugs targeted at a huge range of diseases. But there is a common feature to the vast majority of known drugs that may not be obvious at first: they generally work by causing something else to fail.