Gert van der Hoek
In Memoriam - Editor, Senior Moderator
August 6, 2010
Arsenal of antibiotics not being restocked
excerpt:
We have come to expect that modern medicine can cure just about any infection. But bacteria are finding ways to evade, one by one, the drugs in our arsenal, and that arsenal is not being replenished with new antibiotics.
Drug companies are abandoning the antibacterial business, citing high development costs, low return on investment and, increasingly, a nearly decade-long stalemate with the Food and Drug Administration over how to bring new antibiotics to market.
Soon, doctors fear, we could be defenseless against bacteria that can resist all existing antibiotics, which would mean more victims like Simon, dead from a staph infection that drugs used to conquer easily.
Dr. Brad Spellberg, an expert on antibiotic resistance and author of Rising Plague: The Global Threat from Deadly Bacteria and Our Dwindling Arsenal to Fight Them, called the situation "catastrophic."
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Without effective antibiotics, the whole medical system falls apart, experts say. Simple problems like diverticulitis turn into life-threatening medical crises. Surgery becomes much riskier without antibiotics that can keep infection at bay.
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Full article
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-antibiotics-crisis-20100806,0,5277492.story
Arsenal of antibiotics not being restocked
excerpt:
We have come to expect that modern medicine can cure just about any infection. But bacteria are finding ways to evade, one by one, the drugs in our arsenal, and that arsenal is not being replenished with new antibiotics.
Drug companies are abandoning the antibacterial business, citing high development costs, low return on investment and, increasingly, a nearly decade-long stalemate with the Food and Drug Administration over how to bring new antibiotics to market.
Soon, doctors fear, we could be defenseless against bacteria that can resist all existing antibiotics, which would mean more victims like Simon, dead from a staph infection that drugs used to conquer easily.
Dr. Brad Spellberg, an expert on antibiotic resistance and author of Rising Plague: The Global Threat from Deadly Bacteria and Our Dwindling Arsenal to Fight Them, called the situation "catastrophic."
-
Without effective antibiotics, the whole medical system falls apart, experts say. Simple problems like diverticulitis turn into life-threatening medical crises. Surgery becomes much riskier without antibiotics that can keep infection at bay.
-
Full article
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-antibiotics-crisis-20100806,0,5277492.story