Antibiotics show free market failure

[pErvinalia]

Quoting from the article.
"The good news, says Simonet, is that all these defences suggest there are lots more potential antibiotics out there, if we can just develop them. Existing drugs come from the 1 per cent of soil microbes we can culture. "We must explore the huge reservoir in the other 99 per cent," he says."

In other words, there is no scientific failure. There is plenty of potential to create new antibiotics. Of course, it will be a never ending quest to keep ahead of resistant bacteria, but it can be done. It is the free market that has let humanity down - not science.

The real worrying trend is that under neoliberalism governments seek to leave university research and even government research more in the hands of the private market. That is, the situation that has got us to this point, is only going to get worse. Here in Australia, the current conservative government is basically anti-science, and has defunded universities and government research to a massive tune. Although, there was one positive, the new $20 billion medical research fund, which could conceivably be directed somewhat towards this problem. The problem is, that we don't know the details of this fund, and knowing the current government this fund will most likely be run for a few small donor interests. Those interests may or may not align with any sense of the antibiotic problem. In fact, it's likely that it won't, and it will be directed towards things that can be monetised quickly, as is the ethos of economic liberals the world over. Fucking scum.

[Warren Dew]

Quoting from the article.
"The good news, says Simonet, is that all these defences suggest there are lots more potential antibiotics out there, if we can just develop them. Existing drugs come from the 1 per cent of soil microbes we can culture. "We must explore the huge reservoir in the other 99 per cent," he says."

In other words, there is no scientific failure. There is plenty of potential to create new antibiotics. Of course, it will be a never ending quest to keep ahead of resistant bacteria, but it can be done. It is the free market that has let humanity down - not science.

I think it's pretty clearly a failure of science if science only allows us to look at 1% of the potential drug sources.

[pErvinalia]

The critical market failure occurred much earlier, when societies around the world allowed companies to flood the market with cheap antibiotics to be fed to livestock on a regular basis. This was not treatment of individual animals by vets, it was turning antibiotics into a food supplement, for reasons of profit. Many scientist warned that the consequences would be a powerful acceleration of the evolution of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, which could pass their resistance via exchange of genetic material to human pathogens. So, once again, greed and the dominance of government by corporate power has had dangerous consequences for human health.

This.

Fine old line American drug companies like Bayer, Xandos, Merc, and Rorer get their million dollar prizes the old fashioned way - by paying top dollar for the best lobbyists and FDA attorneys in the business.

Also, antibiotics used to be hugely profitable until they lost effectiveness. The loss of profitability has nothing to do with cheap, generic copies appearing on the market after the patents expired. If new antibiotics are developed and effective the patents on them will ensure renewed windfalls for big pharma long before those patents expire. The sad truth about the lack of new and effective antibiotics is that no matter how much money is thrown at research, the scientists are losing the race against the speed of mutation that bacteria have become capable of. That speed was actually caused by the very creation of antibiotics. It looks to me like antibiotics may have fundamentally been a temporary solution to the problems they were invented to fight.

Exactly. It's not a "free market" failure - free markets tend to value things that work much more highly than things that don't work - it's a scientific failure. But I can see how a source called "New Scientist" might not want to admit that it's science that's the issue here.

NewScientist was amongst those that warned via editorial, and articles by top microbiologists, of the problems. It is absurd to call the antibiotic crisis a "science failure" - it is a failure by society to make rational decisions, due to the power exerted by corporations who are only interested in their own bottom line, and have the influence over governments to ensure that they are free to pursue their own narrow interests.

Are you suggesting that Warren, as a conservative, might be anti-science?!! How dare you, Jim! Conservatives are so pro-science it's not funny. Thank god for conservatives!

[pErvinalia]

Quoting from the article.
"The good news, says Simonet, is that all these defences suggest there are lots more potential antibiotics out there, if we can just develop them. Existing drugs come from the 1 per cent of soil microbes we can culture. "We must explore the huge reservoir in the other 99 per cent," he says."

In other words, there is no scientific failure. There is plenty of potential to create new antibiotics. Of course, it will be a never ending quest to keep ahead of resistant bacteria, but it can be done. It is the free market that has let humanity down - not science.

I think it's pretty clearly a failure of science if science only allows us to look at 1% of the potential drug sources.

How does "science" only allow us to look at 1% of sources?!? Are you just stringing random words together here? The bloody scary thing is that, as far as I know, you are an MD. Is that true?

[JimC]

Quoting from the article.
"The good news, says Simonet, is that all these defences suggest there are lots more potential antibiotics out there, if we can just develop them. Existing drugs come from the 1 per cent of soil microbes we can culture. "We must explore the huge reservoir in the other 99 per cent," he says."

In other words, there is no scientific failure. There is plenty of potential to create new antibiotics. Of course, it will be a never ending quest to keep ahead of resistant bacteria, but it can be done. It is the free market that has let humanity down - not science.

I think it's pretty clearly a failure of science if science only allows us to look at 1% of the potential drug sources.

Do you think there are not micro-biological scientists who would give their eye teeth to investigate the 99%? This is a failure to properly fund vital research. It is clear that the mantra of a free market being the best way to finance innovation is an abject failure in this case, since there is no profit motive dangling like a carrot in front of the corporate donkeys... Governments, working for the good of the populace, must act. Perhaps tax breaks available for companies that do start projects in this field...

[Warren Dew]

Quoting from the article.
"The good news, says Simonet, is that all these defences suggest there are lots more potential antibiotics out there, if we can just develop them. Existing drugs come from the 1 per cent of soil microbes we can culture. "We must explore the huge reservoir in the other 99 per cent," he says."

In other words, there is no scientific failure. There is plenty of potential to create new antibiotics. Of course, it will be a never ending quest to keep ahead of resistant bacteria, but it can be done. It is the free market that has let humanity down - not science.

I think it's pretty clearly a failure of science if science only allows us to look at 1% of the potential drug sources.

Do you think there are not micro-biological scientists who would give their eye teeth to investigate the 99%? This is a failure to properly fund vital research. It is clear that the mantra of a free market being the best way to finance innovation is an abject failure in this case, since there is no profit motive dangling like a carrot in front of the corporate donkeys... Governments, working for the good of the populace, must act. Perhaps tax breaks available for companies that do start projects in this field...

Since the present scientific failure is the result of a public funding model, it can hardly be blamed on the free market. Certainly the present funding model ought to change. A fully free market model might or might not be the best solution, but it does seem likely that corporations would fund more of this kind of research if they didn't think they had a government willing to force other people to pay for it instead.

[JimC]

Warren Dew wrote:

...Since the present scientific failure is the result of a public funding model...

Where on earth did you dredge that from? The present "scientific failure" is the result of corporate funding of antibiotic research dropping to a very low level because of a lack of perceived profit potential. The solution will need to be a public funding model...

[pErvinalia]

I don't think Warren thinks about anything he says. He just seems to blurt out random irrational statements.

[Warren Dew]

Warren Dew wrote:

...Since the present scientific failure is the result of a public funding model...

Where on earth did you dredge that from? The present "scientific failure" is the result of corporate funding of antibiotic research dropping to a very low level because of a lack of perceived profit potential. The solution will need to be a public funding model...

The U.S. Federal government already spends about $80 billion a year on scientific research. The fact that you're unaware of that shows just how ineffective public research funding is.

[Drewish]

Cheap antibiotics that don't work for the poor. Effective expensive ones for the wealthy. Fewer poor people, the free market works. Only obstacle is governments demanding that we not use poor people as cheap clinical trials for potentially unsafe meds. We should fix that.

[JimC]

Warren Dew wrote:

...Since the present scientific failure is the result of a public funding model...

Where on earth did you dredge that from? The present "scientific failure" is the result of corporate funding of antibiotic research dropping to a very low level because of a lack of perceived profit potential. The solution will need to be a public funding model...

The U.S. Federal government already spends about $80 billion a year on scientific research. The fact that you're unaware of that shows just how ineffective public research funding is.

And what % of that research is used for the development of new antibiotics? Perhaps one could argue that a higher % should have been spent on pure research on the interaction between antibiotics and pathogens. However, specific applications such as developing a given antibiotic have always been left to the big pharmaceutical companies, a method which may have worked in the past, but no longer seems to. If this is a failure of public funding, it is because of previous false assumptions that market forces would always do the job. They don't, in this case at least. (Note that I'm not making generalisations about the value of market forces in other contexts)

[Warren Dew]

Warren Dew wrote:

...Since the present scientific failure is the result of a public funding model...

Where on earth did you dredge that from? The present "scientific failure" is the result of corporate funding of antibiotic research dropping to a very low level because of a lack of perceived profit potential. The solution will need to be a public funding model...

The U.S. Federal government already spends about $80 billion a year on scientific research. The fact that you're unaware of that shows just how ineffective public research funding is.

And what % of that research is used for the development of new antibiotics?

Most is spent on the National Institutes of Health, and much of the rest on the National Science Foundation. One would think that methods of culturing bacteria would be appropriately funded there, but it seems it's not.

If the pure science research were done properly, the development of new antibiotics - a development task, not a scientific research task - would be done by the private sector, as it was the last time we needed new antibiotics a couple of decades ago.

[JimC]

It's not a matter of the science being done properly, or not properly, but whether the appropriate funding was made available. A failure of assigning priorities, perhaps, down to bureaucrats. However, the whole field of antibiotic research has been (mistakenly) mainly left to corporate research and development. Whether we call it a market failure, or a failure of government oversight, it is certainly not a failure of science.

[pErvinalia]

Warren Dew wrote:

...Since the present scientific failure is the result of a public funding model...

Where on earth did you dredge that from? The present "scientific failure" is the result of corporate funding of antibiotic research dropping to a very low level because of a lack of perceived profit potential. The solution will need to be a public funding model...

The U.S. Federal government already spends about $80 billion a year on scientific research. The fact that you're unaware of that shows just how ineffective public research funding is.

And what % of that research is used for the development of new antibiotics?

Most is spent on the National Institutes of Health, and much of the rest on the National Science Foundation. One would think that methods of culturing bacteria would be appropriately funded there, but it seems it's not.

If the pure science research were done properly, the development of new antibiotics - a development task, not a scientific research task - would be done by the private sector, as it was the last time we needed new antibiotics a couple of decades ago.

And your bollocks about "science" was to blame... Where does that fit into this fantasy?

[pErvinalia]

It's not a matter of the science being done properly, or not properly, but whether the appropriate funding was made available. A failure of assigning priorities, perhaps, down to bureaucrats. However, the whole field of antibiotic research has been (mistakenly) mainly left to corporate research and development. Whether we call it a market failure, or a failure of government oversight, it is certainly not a failure of science.

Yeah, let's not kid ourselves. Neoliberalism since Reagan and Thatcher's time has seen the doctrinal swing from public funding of anything to private funding of as much as humanly possible. We don't have a more publicly funded system now than we did back in the 80's. Neoliberalism has added to the problem, not alleviated it. If it had alleviated it, we wouldn't be in this situation, according to the gospel of Warren.