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http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/07/are-we-running-out-of-antibiotics.html
"According to the Infectious Disease Society of America, only five of the 13 biggest pharmaceutical companies are still looking at all. Medications that treat cancer or chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, or even baldness are simply much more lucrative. That’s because a single course of the most expensive antibiotics (linezolid and daptomycin) runs just seven days and sells for $1,000 to $2,000, while a single course of, say, any given cancer treatment runs for weeks to months and costs from 10 to 20 times as much. Chronic-disease medications, which a patient typically takes for the rest of his or her life, yield even higher returns. It doesn’t matter that bacterial infections are infinitely more common than cancer or even heart disease; antibiotics are still less profitable."
"Policymakers are, at last, working to change this. One bill floating through Congress, the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now Act, would extend the patents on certain types of antibiotics by five years to protect them from generic competition. Other proposals include tax breaks, liability protection, and the same guaranteed government purchases that have been so successful in spurring bioterrorism research."
Great
Now drug companies need tax breaks/subsidies to invest in antibiotics.
No windfall profits, no worky on drug.....
"According to the Infectious Disease Society of America, only five of the 13 biggest pharmaceutical companies are still looking at all. Medications that treat cancer or chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, or even baldness are simply much more lucrative. That’s because a single course of the most expensive antibiotics (linezolid and daptomycin) runs just seven days and sells for $1,000 to $2,000, while a single course of, say, any given cancer treatment runs for weeks to months and costs from 10 to 20 times as much. Chronic-disease medications, which a patient typically takes for the rest of his or her life, yield even higher returns. It doesn’t matter that bacterial infections are infinitely more common than cancer or even heart disease; antibiotics are still less profitable."
"Policymakers are, at last, working to change this. One bill floating through Congress, the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now Act, would extend the patents on certain types of antibiotics by five years to protect them from generic competition. Other proposals include tax breaks, liability protection, and the same guaranteed government purchases that have been so successful in spurring bioterrorism research."
Great
Now drug companies need tax breaks/subsidies to invest in antibiotics.
No windfall profits, no worky on drug.....
