A Deadly Threat !

We are living longer and the health system is consistently conquering old diseases, but we are also teetering on the edge of a return to the dark ages where a mere scratch delivers a death sentence.
The wonderful world of antibiotics has been our shield against infections but now the bugs are gaining immunity and only a handful are left - and even those are at risk.

The discovery of Penicillium just before the start of the second world war saved us from the horrors of wound infections that killed so many during the 1914-18 conflict.  New discoveries seemed likely to open a new frontier of public health and they quickly gained the reputation of the " wonder drug ".

Unfortunately, many patients failed to take the full course of the drug prescribed by their doctor.  When they felt a little better, they discontinued and this allowed a residue of the bacteria involved to survive - and these survivors quickly gained a degree of immunity to that particular drug strain.


Another problem was the fame antibiotics quickly gained.  They have no healing properties against a virus, but some patients with the common cold demanded antibiotics and some doctors issued a prescription to keep the peace.   They quickly became " over used " !

The problem exacerbated when agriculture discovered that giving antibiotics to animals helped them gain weight quickly and assisted with other health problems.  Agriculture absorbs a huge quantity in this precautionary manner, again assisting to the spread of immunity.

We are fast reaching the stage when bugs that infect our hospitals - such as " Golden Staph " will be untreatable.   Operations which are now common such as hip replacements will be high risk and transplants will be impossible.   Even a common scratch while gardening may turn to sepsis - and take a life.

We need to keep one step ahead of this immunity race and that requires the pharmaceutical industry to be producing new drugs - but that is not happening.  Drug development can cost billions and the developer only gets a return during the years that the new drug is under patent protection.   From discovery to approval for general use involves years of testing and field trials and that profit window is ever shortening.   Few of the big drug companies are prepared to take those sort of risks, particularly when counterfeit copies are likely to siphon off sales in third world countries.

Another problem is tailoring an older drug to treat some of the rarer diseases that only affect a small number of patients.   Because the market is small, the cost of the drug must be high to cover development costs and often the patient can not afford treatment and it will not be covered by the national health insurance scheme.   That is a positive disincentive for this type of research.

Perhaps we need to restate the patent laws and start the time clock ticking from the operational date of a new drug rather than from the date of its discovery.   Perhaps we need to offer a given discovery award for effective drugs that treat a disease that has low patient numbers to make it financially attractive to researchers.

Making drugs that have the ability to replace those suffering immunity problems might be wise to be made unavailable to the farming industry.   Perhaps a new coding - For human use only - with strict enforcement.

Unless we take decisive action there is a real probability that health may revert to the standard of a past century !