Re:Biopharma has abandoned antibiotic development
by Fomite on Monday December 16, 2019 @08:29PM
(#21809592)
I work in this area, and a couple notes:
- The free market is actually doing a really good job driving down antibiotic use in livestock.
- There's not a huge amount of evidence that livestock use of antibiotics has as big an impact on human resistance patterns we see. Overuse in human populations is a big enough problem on its own. Medicine has, in some ways, been really eager to abdicate its own role in developing resistance by pointing at veterinary use.
- There are a number of policy changes already in effect, but all they can do is kick the can down the road a little. Bacteria will develop resistance to antibiotics - it's what they do. Some more easily, some less easily. This is a treadmill you can never get off - all stewardship does is control the speed. Even with good stewardship programs, we'll still need new classes of antibiotics.
- The free market is actually doing a really good job driving down antibiotic use in livestock.
- There's not a huge amount of evidence that livestock use of antibiotics has as big an impact on human resistance patterns we see. Overuse in human populations is a big enough problem on its own. Medicine has, in some ways, been really eager to abdicate its own role in developing resistance by pointing at veterinary use.
- There are a number of policy changes already in effect, but all they can do is kick the can down the road a little. Bacteria will develop resistance to antibiotics - it's what they do. Some more easily, some less easily. This is a treadmill you can never get off - all stewardship does is control the speed. Even with good stewardship programs, we'll still need new classes of antibiotics.