Posted by
Always To The Right on Thursday, December 30, 2010 10:36:35 PM
New Vaccines, Stat! (National Review Online)
The vaccine makers are in a bind — and public health is in danger.
By Jonathan (Josh) Bloom, Ph.D., Gilbert Ross, M.D.
The development of new antibiotics has slowed to a trickle, just when we
need them most. As drug-resistant bacteria are on the rampage
worldwide, we find
ourselves in a most precarious situation — one not unlike the one we
faced in the pre-antibiotic era, before penicillin, when staphylococcal
and pneumococcal
infections were the dominant pathogens. Now MRSA (Methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus) kills more people than AIDS every year, and other
multiple-drug-resistant organisms have appeared, leaving doctors with
few therapeutic weapons for treating a number of prevalent infections.
How did this happen? Much of the blame can be laid at the feet of the FDA. (ACSH)