Life Science log

Drug resistance is fast destroying the power of antibiotics. Tighter infection control and incentives for drug companies to invent more antibiotics are usually proposed as the answer. But the authors of a new paper say we have to think out of the box.What are we to do about the diminishing power of antibiotics - once the miracle drugs that looked set to end infectious diseases? We know the problem is becoming very serious - here is a piece I wrote about the alarming prospects for a future without antibiotics.But we don't hear much in the way of imaginative answers. So it's refreshing to read a paper out this morning from Aaron Kesselheim, from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and Kevin Outterson, a professor at Boston University Law School.Their analysis, published in the journal Health Affairs, says the usual idea, to give pharmaceutical companies financial incentives to invent and manufacture more antibiotics, won't work. One of the reasons we are in this parlous state of a

"This is a war we cannot win unless we adopt a two-pronged strategy: one that would boost the supply of new drugs and at the same time preserve the ones we have left," says Aaron Kesselheim, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., one of the paper's co-authors.