Needed: Some new antibiotics

The New York Times, 11/6/10

This morning's New York Times has an article by Andrew Pollack on the problem of the pharmaceutical industry's lack of interest in developing new antibiotics. From an economic perspective, it's hard to entice companies to develop drugs that a patient might need for a few weeks, when other drugs may be required for years. Yet the problem of multidrug-resistance, particularly for gram-negative organisms, continues to accelerate. Pollack points out the lack of consumer advocacy on this issue, noting that advocacy has focused on reducing transmission of infections in hospitals, rather than the development of new therapeutics.