MAKING DRUG APPROVALS ENORMOUSLY EXPENSIVE REDUCES THE SUPPLY OF NEW DRUGS: HOW SURPRISING!

But it is very alarming when antibiotics that we all could need are put on hold

Pharmaceutical companies have all but stopped developing new antibiotics, placing Australians at greater risk of infections from drug-resistant strains of bacteria. "In the 1980s there were three to five new antibiotics a year coming on to the market, whereas now we'd be lucky to get a new one every two years," said Professor Lindsay Grayson, director of the department of infectious diseases at Melbourne's Austin Hospital. "And there's definitely a greater array of different germs now resistant to every single antibiotic that there is."

Professor Grayson told The Australian that drug companies were, instead, focusing on drugs that were used for long periods and provided greater profit such as drugs to treat cholesterol, obesity or anxiety. "You treat someone who is sick with antibiotics for only a week or two. They make more money with, say, an anti-obesity drug that someone takes for 40 years," he said. Writing in The Medical Journal of Australia, Professor Grayson and infectious diseases physician Patrick Charles said it cost more than $US500 million ($650 million) to research and develop any new drug. "So not only are they developing fewer new antibiotics, the ones they are launching are ones that treat many germs, to reduce costs and maximise profits," he said. "But to do that, these multi-purpose drugs need to be able to kill lots of different types of germs. As a physician, that's not what I want to use. "If I'm treating someone for a sore throat, that same antibiotic is killing a lot of physically harmless, and needed, bacteria in your bowel, for example, and the collateral damage is too great. We want to use an antibiotic that is very clearly targeted to the germ that we want to kill, whereas they want a drug that they can market to treat lots of different germs."

A recent study that appeared in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases stated that Food and Drug Administration approvals for new antibiotics in the US declined 56 per cent during the past 20 years. The researchers showed only five of the 506 drugs currently under development were antibiotics. About 7000 Australians a year die from hospital superbugs, but Professor Grayson warned the problems will become more critical with the development of multi-drug resistant germs that spread in the general public. "MRSA, a form of golden staph, was once only in the hospitals, but now it's developed a new strain that's out in the community," he said. "In San Francisco, they've had a 20-fold increase in patients presenting with multi-resistant golden staph that they got in the community, not in hospitals. It's a very scary scenario."

"If the discovery and development of innovative medicines, including new antibiotics, is to be encouraged then intellectual property will need to be strengthened and the reward for innovation increased, not decreased, as is the current trend," Medicines Australia spokesman Steve Haynes said.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation.

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