Superbugs? Do We Need Subsidies for New Antibiotics?
Worried about an impending public health crisis, government officials are considering offering financial incentives to the pharmaceutical industry, like tax breaks and patent extensions, to spur the development of vitally needed antibiotics… a newly discovered mutation called NDM-1 renders certain germs like E. coli invulnerable to nearly all modern antibiotics….
Antibiotics are typically taken for a week or two and usually cure the patient. While that makes them cost-effective for the health system, it also makes them less lucrative to drug companies than medicines for diseases like cancer or diabetes, which might be taken for months, or even for life, because they do not cure the patient.
Full article on antibiotic research subsidies in The New York Times.
The reason behind why drug makers are slow to find new antibiotics is a byproduct of the drug discovery process. The regulatory hurdles are such that pharmaceutical companies almost have to concentrate their efforts on a handful of chronic illnesses rather than drugs the average patients will only take for 10 days once a year.
You mean the pharmaceutical companies don’t make drugs because of an altruistic sense of duty?