An article appeared in a recent Forbes Magazine about the dangers of superbugs. The WHO (World Health Organization) has said that these bugs, which have appeared in Britain, India, and Pakistan, are immune to our current battery of antibiotics. In the U.S. alone, infections kill about 100,000 patients a year.
So what is the FDA doing? Nothing. In fact, quite the opposite. They have said, as an official statement, that the approval policy will be lengthened, not shortened, and that there will be more hoops to jump through in order to conduct R&D. In fact, new FDA rules are now retroactive to existing clinical trials. The FDA has no plan to revamp its slow and deadly approval process. Drug companies like Pfizer, has dumped its antibiotic research pipeline because of this. Other pharmaceutical companies are sure to follow.
This should be an issue of the greatest urgency; yet it's received hardly any attention from our leaders in Washington, and even less attention by the usually sensation-seeking media. The dearth of new antibiotics in the pharmaceutical R&D pipeline is a omnipresent scandal that should justify focused and persistent media attention. Sadly, it may take the entrance of a few of these superbugs into our communities for the FDA to alter their policies. But by then, it might be too late.
