The Super Bug

Recently making the rounds across my Facebook has been the headline about a form of E Coli that has been found to be resistant to one of the so called last resort drugs.  The article is full of doom and gloom about, which, while severe is not as dire as the article makes it sound.  THis Arstechnica article does an excellent job of following up with some facts about the specific strain of E Coli, and helps bring a rationale view of the hysteria.

I'd like to instead talk a little bit about the reaction I've seen.  It has fallen in line typically with the hysteria that we're all about to be wiped out by super bugs, and that the drug companies are all just greedily making sure we're ill to sell more drugs.  To the first point, here in the US we are very unlikely to fall victim to death by super bug.  There are actually quite a few antibiotics of last resort, which will still be effective going forward.

The other issue of Drug Companies just being greedy to keep folks just well enough to go on makes very little sense.  The development of a new drug is very complicated.  Not only do the companies need to find solutions that don't utilize past cures, since bacteria will already have an immunity to that.  They also must be precisely calibrated to make sure that it also does not just wipe out all of the good bacteria you have that helps with every day life.  It also does not compute that a company would suddenly stop profiting if it found a new resistant antibiotic.  If a company was able to find a prescription that would be impervious to bacteria learning to cope, it would make them the sole remaining company with all the profit of people continuing to buy only that drug when they got sick. 

Of course, this all goes without addressing the real issue of over prescription, which falls upon us, the consumer.  Doctors respond to incentives, and for most folks that means that they must get something in return for having paid the bill and taken the time to go to the doctor's office.  We demand a prescription since we could not accept that  all of that effort was just for the physician to say we needed to wait a week to get better.  This is truly what will help with these super bugs, not hysteria and pointing fingers at someone else.