<story><title>World without antibiotics</title><url>http://www.publicbooks.org/world-without-antibiotics/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>moppl</author><text>There exists an alternative to antibiotics since it&amp;#x27;s very beginnings. It is the bacteriophages therapy:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Phage_therapy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Phage_therapy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is practiced  since the 20ies in Tiblisi Georgia. TED talk about it:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=sjH6m5VuR6I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=sjH6m5VuR6I&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;So it is not all doomsday.</text></comment>
<story><title>World without antibiotics</title><url>http://www.publicbooks.org/world-without-antibiotics/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Angostura</author><text>There was an interesting piece on BBC radio 4 a few months ago looking at the problems with the market when it comes to developing new antibiotics and I suspect government intervention will be needed to help the market along.&lt;p&gt;The usual model of drug development is&lt;p&gt;Spot opportunity &amp;gt; spend lots on R&amp;amp;D &amp;gt; Go into production &amp;gt; maximise sales &amp;gt; recoup money as soon as possible &amp;gt; Profit!&lt;p&gt;However, with new antibiotics we, as society absolutely do &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; want them to maximise sales. Ideally we don&amp;#x27;t want any production at all. At worst, we&amp;#x27;d like it to be used in a handful of cases for 5, 10 or 20 years, keeping it as a treatment of last resource.&lt;p&gt;In such circumstances you can see the problem for the pharmaceuticals. Personally, I think there needs to be some kind of prize fund that can let the companies recoup (and make a decent profit) from antibiotic discoveries. Either that or public-sector research.</text></comment>