Antibiotics show free market failure

[Clinton Huxley]

We'll all be back in 1853 soon enough.

[JimC]

Ah, yes , the new, more effective antibiotics that the pharma companies will magick out of thin air once a sufficient number of people are dying to make them profitable. There's fuck all research being done, bringing a product to market takes years and most compounds never make it. Some that do are a bit rubbish, like Tamiflu.

Free market or scientific failure (I think it's actually a combination of both) aside, I prefer the current state of affairs to those of the past. If you disagree, Clinton, please return to the Crimean war of 1853. Nurse Nightingale will keep you in as good health as she can.

To what degree is it a failure of science?

To me, that would mean actual scientists being incompetent or fraudulent in the reporting of their research...

[Hermit]

We'll all be back in 1853 soon enough.

If only we would be so lucky, Scumple.

[Hermit]

Ah, yes , the new, more effective antibiotics that the pharma companies will magick out of thin air once a sufficient number of people are dying to make them profitable. There's fuck all research being done, bringing a product to market takes years and most compounds never make it. Some that do are a bit rubbish, like Tamiflu.

Free market or scientific failure (I think it's actually a combination of both) aside, I prefer the current state of affairs to those of the past. If you disagree, Clinton, please return to the Crimean war of 1853. Nurse Nightingale will keep you in as good health as she can.

To what degree is it a failure of science?

To me, that would mean actual scientists being incompetent or fraudulent in the reporting of their research...

I did not say it's a failure of scientists, Jim. Neither incompetence nor fraudulence is involved. It's just that science did not realise the power and speed of mutation by bacteria, and the deleterious effect that would have on the efficacy of antibiotics. Now it is lagging in the race against it. Certainly, market forces have a big impact as well. I've never denied that.

[Clinton Huxley]

It's not like the concept of antibiotic resistance is a new thing. I've been reading warnings of impending doom for the last 20 years.

[JimC]

Hermit wrote:

...It's just that science did not realise the power and speed of mutation by bacteria, and the deleterious effect that would have on the efficacy of antibiotics....

I've been reading for years and years in NewScientist warnings from various scientists about just that phenomenon. Perhaps it was true in the dawn ages of antibiotics, but it was soon apparent to any trained biologist with a background in evolutionary theory what would happen.

What we really have is a failure of science policy - none of the bureaucrats in control of the purse strings listened to the science grunts at the chalk face...

[pErvinalia]

Yep. Same thing as global warming.

[Strontium Dog]

Since everyone seems so certain new antibiotics aren't being developed, I'd love to know how everyone seems to know what new products the pharmaceutical companies are currently working on.

Knowing how secretive Big Pharma is about its R&D, I can only imagine that we are blessed to be in the presence of industrial spies on this forum.

[rainbow]

Since everyone seems so certain new antibiotics aren't being developed, I'd love to know how everyone seems to know what new products the pharmaceutical companies are currently working on.

Knowing how secretive Big Pharma is about its R&D, I can only imagine that we are blessed to be in the presence of industrial spies on this forum.

That's what they want you to think.

[Clinton Huxley]

Pharma companies have to test all their drugs on animals and then human volunteers. Legal requirement. They are supposed to register all their trials. And investors kind of like to know what pharma companies are working on....Their portfolios aren't usually secret.

[MrJonno]

Not to mention if someone external doesn't know about what you are working on how can you patent it?

[mistermack]

Maybe it's the patent laws that work against antibiotics.

You get a limited patent time to exploit a drug, before other manufacturers can make it licence-free.
So all the incentives are to make the maximum money, while you can, and sell it to anyone and everyone, with no regard to how they use it, or future resistance building up.

Maybe if they tinkered with special patent laws for antibiotics, the companies would put more money into developing them, and take more care of how they are sold and prescribed.

And they could put a ban on antibiotics that are still effective on humans being used on animals.

[Warren Dew]

Maybe it's the patent laws that work against antibiotics.

You get a limited patent time to exploit a drug, before other manufacturers can make it licence-free.
So all the incentives are to make the maximum money, while you can, and sell it to anyone and everyone, with no regard to how they use it, or future resistance building up.

The antibiotics that are really highly overused, such as the ones put in animal feed, are long off patent. If anything, the drug companies have an incentive to extract the maximum price while the drug remains on patent, which limits usage.

[Warren Dew]

Pharma companies have to test all their drugs on animals and then human volunteers. Legal requirement. They are supposed to register all their trials. And investors kind of like to know what pharma companies are working on....Their portfolios aren't usually secret.

Most of the time involved in the drug development process happens before clinical trials, though. The clinical trials are expensive but normally don't take a long time, especially for drugs like antibiotics that treat acute diseases.

There was a huge outcry about antibiotic resistance back in the 1980s. Then only a year or two later, all the headlines switched to how there were all these new antibiotics coming onto the market.

[Clinton Huxley]

Pharma companies will still tout their pipeline, even early dev stuff, as fat pipeline = higher share price. Anyway, the majority of compounds in early dev fail to ever get inside a human. I expect if we see people dropping like flies, we will see the FDA and MHRA relaxing their regulatory requirements.

I certainly wouldn't put my money on a pharma company being able to develop a new antibiotic, from a standing start in under 5 years.