The Guardian view on antibiotics: recent breakthroughs are great news, but humanity is losing the bigger race | Editorial
Our magic bullets are increasingly rare and ineffective. The golden age of discovery is over and the way we develop and use drugs needs to change During her tenure as director general of the World Health Organization, Dr Margaret Chan used to say that all of the “easy” antibiotics had already been found. Her point was that in responding to the urgent threat of antibiotic-resistant infections, we would struggle to find new medicines – or preserve the ones we have – if we didn’t find new ways of working. She was right. Since 2017, just 16 antibiotics have gained widespread regulatory approval – mostly close relatives of medicines already in use and so unlikely to evade resistance for long. The development of new ones is a slow and unprofitable business, curative medicines being less lucrative than ones treating longer-term conditions. And the scientific outlook remains bleak. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
Our magic bullets are increasingly rare and ineffective. The golden age of discovery is over and the way we develop and use drugs needs to change
During her tenure as director general of the World Health Organization, Dr Margaret Chan used to say that all of the “easy” antibiotics had already been found. Her point was that in responding to the urgent threat of antibiotic-resistant infections, we would struggle to find new medicines – or preserve the ones we have – if we didn’t find new ways of working. She was right.
Since 2017, just 16 antibiotics have gained widespread regulatory approval – mostly close relatives of medicines already in use and so unlikely to evade resistance for long. The development of new ones is a slow and unprofitable business, curative medicines being less lucrative than ones treating longer-term conditions. And the scientific outlook remains bleak.