Little Investment For New Antibiotics. Not Enough Profit.
During my last stay in the hospital needed to treat a remnant of staff infection I had a conversion with an infectious disease specialist. What he told me was just appalling.
There is almost NO investment in NEW antibiotics by private pharmaceuticals. There is not enough profit to invest and some very large companies no longer research that area of medicine. And we are facing even more resistant bugs than ever before. So it should be comforting that conservatives favor cutting government which also includes antibiotic research. As of right now there are few if any new antibiotics coming to market.
In the 1950's when just a few pills of penicillin would kill just about everything, today infections must be treated with 3 or more weeks of intravenous injection. My first treatment was 23 days of antibiotics. My present regimen is 30 days on a pump replenished every 48 hours dosing on 8 hour intervals.
Not researching antibiotics to more resistant bugs is almost a national security issue. And it is particularly worrisome when the medical community sees a day when even minor wounds could be life threatening. So now without government funded antibiotic research there virtually won't be any.