Eli Lilly’s 2001 annual report stated that “Xigris… will prove to be one of our industry’s genuine breakthroughs” (1). The company believed that its first-in-class drug “could help save one in five people who otherwise would die” from severe sepsis. One of the world’s oldest and most virulent killers, sepsis is the third most common cause of death for hospitalized patients in the developed world after heart disease and cancer. In the United States alone, 750,000 patients are hospitalized with…