Free Republic

If you’re an editor in need of a medical headline to fill out some column space, I can recommend ‘New antibiotics needed, experts warn’. Don’t worry if you don’t have all the details: experts are always warning about that, and unfortunately, they’re always right. That headline’s been valid for years now, and it looks like it will be good for quite a few more.Now, why should that be? Here’s a large market, with a substantial unmet need that’s doing nothing but growing over time. Why aren’t the pharma research labs stepping up to fill it? You can get several answers...

MRSA is one of a number of bacteria that are resistant to many antibiotics © Science Photo LibraryGlobal research efforts to develop new antibiotics need to be accelerated urgently, the UK government’s chief medical officer has warned. She adds that that new drugs are desperately needed to fight the ‘catastrophic threat’ of growing antimicrobial resistance.In the second part of her annual report Dame Sally Davies focuses on antimicrobial resistance and infectious diseases. She says that the development of new antibiotics has stalled since the late 1980s because ‘there are fewer economic incentives’ to produce new antimicrobial agents than for other...