A recent article in USA Today proclaimed that we are *this* far away from no longer having working antibiotics, a cataclysmic development that would pose "an existential threat for modern medicine." Is this really true? Let's ask Dr. David Shlaes, one of the foremost experts in the world of antimicrobial science.
Dr. David Shlaes
It's the end and beginning of an era. With this in mind, I provide a retrospective of blogs going back over a decade.
Recently, Contrafect, an antibiotic biotech company developing a novel product for the treatment of severe staphylococcal infections, suffered a failure in its phase 3 trial. The trail was designed to show the superiority of its new drug over standard treatments. Why is it so hard to show that one antibiotic works better than another in a clinical trial?
Pull incentives to fix the broken antibiotic marketplace – like a subscription payment of several billion dollars per needed antibiotic – are finally going to be implemented in 2032. What happens then? But before we get there … a brief word about blogging on Google’s Blogger.
Dr. David Shlaes has been following the various discussions around the development of rapid diagnostic tests for acute bacterial infections. The ACSH advisor has concluded that broad-spectrum empiric therapy of potentially serious infections in the hospital will continue – and well it should – regardless of the availability of such rapid tests.
What would happen if we approached antibiotic resistance with the same fervor that we have for covid? Is there a reason why we should not?
As an anti-coronavirus therapy, Remdesivir has been rather disappointing. That's primarily because the drug is given intravenously to those who are already very ill with COVID-19. But what would happen if the drug could be delivered directly to the lungs, to prevent severe disease? Gilead is giving it a shot. Here are some of the pros and cons of that approach.
Everyone take a deep breath and relax. During these crazy times, people are making all kinds of wild predictions about what drug or vaccine will work. Dr. David Shlaes takes a sobering look at the chances for any of these therapies to work. It's not as easy as you'd think. We should all lower our expectations a bit.
The United States is not the only country where drug pricing is disjointed. Referring to Europe, ACSH advisor Dr. David Shlaes writes that it is "definitely still a tapestry of nations or even the Wild West." Especially in the world of antibiotics.
Antibiotic resistance is spotty. If you are hospitalized in New York and you acquire a Gram-negative infection in the hospital, there is a reasonable chance it will be caused by a highly resistant pathogen. If you go to a hospital in New Hampshire or Vermont, there is almost no chance for that to happen. ACSH advisor Dr. David Shlaes explains.
The development of new antibiotics is as much about money as it is about science. ACSH advisor Dr. David Shlaes writes about biotechs, IPOs, disappointed investors, market cap, and CEO egos.
Antibiotics expert Dr. David Shlaes has been fighting two very tough fights for more than three decades. One is against increasingly dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria; the other, against complacency. This American Council advisor is deeply concerned that antibiotic research and development is not even remotely adequate for keeping up with the bugs.