[ExI] The post-antibiotic era

[BillK]

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 11:55 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> It is not quite that bad, but it is taking seriously. Not an existential
> risk, and unlikely to shorten lifespans dramatically (note that she talks
> about death rates of bacterial infections), but a real risk to our
> individual lives.
>
> The problem seems to be that right now (1) there are few economic incentives
> to develop better or new kinds of antibiotics for a variety of reasons, (2)
> the people struggling against resistance are mostly stuck in "reduce
> misuse"-mode, which means that they do not help (1) much, and likely will
> fail because they can at most stipulate sensible rules in their own
> countries, not in emerging markets where the big breeding of resistant
> pathogens take place.
>
>

The tone of your comment seems to indicate that you think it is not a
really serious problem. (?)

The medics, on the other hand, seem to be panicking about it.

In the US, deaths from resistant infections is approaching the scale
of road deaths.

The CDC has issued a Threat Report 2013 that says
"Each year in the United States, at least 2 million people become
infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least
23,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections.
Many more people die from other conditions that were complicated by an
antibiotic-resistant infection.
The estimates are based on conservative assumptions and are likely
minimum estimates.
They are the best approximations that can be derived from currently
available data."

<http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/>

To rephrase your comment about 'few economic incentives', that means
that the giant pharma companies don't see big enough profits to
justify them developing new drugs. As the report says, they stopped
developing new antibiotics in 1987. So presumably they are already
making big enough profits on existing drugs (which are now failing to
cure infections).
So we will have to rely on government-funded research for new drugs.

BillK