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New Approaches to Winning the Fight Against Superbugs
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New Approaches to Winning the Fight Against Superbugs

Knowledge at Wharton·@HashtagPLUS·about 1 month ago
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When a Pennsylvania woman was recently found to carry a strain of E. coli that was resistant to colistin, an antibiotic of last resort, alarm bells went off in the medical community about the arrival of the first pan-drug resistant ‘superbug’ in the U.S. With few antibiotics in development, and doctors and patients continuing to overuse the drugs, the situation has become critical. Ezekiel Emanuel, a renowned bioethicist who is vice provost for global initiatives and chair of the medical ethics and health policy department at the University of Pennsylvania, is offering two solutions: Require hospitals and outpatient clinics to join a government program that tracks antibiotics use, and offer a $2 billion prize to folks to develop new antibiotics. He argues that the marketplace model – letting market forces boost the return on investment on antibiotics high enough to spur more development by drug companies – doesn’t work in this case and a new approach is needed.…

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