John LaMattina is no apologist for drug companies making big profits. As former head of drug research worldwide for Pfizer Inc., the Stonington resident knows how much it takes to develop a new drug these days, and it's upward of $2.6 billion.

That's before companies start taking a single cent in profit.

"People don't notice the risks taken by these companies," he told me in an interview at Sift bakery in Mystic.

And LaMattina, since his retirement about a decade ago, has been devoting himself to telling the public about the risks and rewards of drug development American style. Which is to say, big risks and big rewards. But also some spectacular misses along the way.

LaMattina's chief platform for telling big pharma's story has been in his blog for Forbes.com. But he recently took a sabbatical from the blog to write a new book, "Pharma and Profits,"published by John Wiley & Sons last year.

The book starts out with a dive into a controversial but highly effective hepatitis C drug breakthrough called Sovaldi developed by Gilead that cost $1,000 a pill, or $84,000 for a typical 12-week course of treatment. The cost, of course, led to a backlash among politicians and the public who decried the huge cost of this life-saving medication.

But LaMattina argues that the drug not only saves lives but also, in the long run, saves the healthcare industry millions of dollars compared with previous, conventional treatments when you look at lower death rates and lower hospitalizations as well as the cost of ineffective treatments.

"Even at $84,000 per patient, Sovaldi is well worth the expense," he said in the book. "When it comes to drug pricing, to paraphrase former President Clinton's advisor, James Carville: It's the value, stupid!"

And LaMattina points out that the $1,000 pill controversy masked the fact that the price for the drug has continued to go down as competition from other hepatitis C drugs forced Gilead to become more competitive. And in the not-too-distant future the price will be even more affordable when patent protection ends and generic brands cut prices even more dramatically.

LaMattina argues against price controls or other ways to cap the costs of patented drugs, mostly because of its effect on research-and-development budgets (and therefore the number of new drugs coming through the pipeline). But he is a fan of generics and what's known as biosimilars, compounds that are essentially copies of known drugs that can be sold at lower prices because they don't have to go through the same regulatory hurdles as untested drugs.

LaMattina noted that the drug industry often gets overlooked for the good it is doing in helping save people's lives when too much attention is focused on drug costs. Even the herculean effort of scientists and others at places like Groton's Pfizer research center seems to have gone largely unnoticed in the political swirl centered on vaccines and vaccine hesitancy.

Yet, according to Centers for Disease Control data, vaccines likely saved more than 2 million American lives, and prevented as many as 17 million hospitalizations. And the cost savings were truly staggering: nearly $900 billion, according to the same data cited by LaMattina.

"We spent $100 billion (on Project Warp Speed), compared to (saving) $900 billion," he told me. "That's not a bad investment."

Lee Howard is The Day's business editor. Reach him for comments at l.howard@theday.com.