Crisis Looms in Antibiotics as Drug Makers Go Bankrupt

[applegrove]

Crisis Looms in Antibiotics as Drug Makers Go Bankrupt

First Big Pharma fled the field, and now start-ups are going belly up, threatening to stifle the development of new drugs.

By Andrew Jacobs at the NYTimes

Dec. 25, 2019, 5:42 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/25/health/antibiotics-new-resistance.html#click=https://t.co/1i8YKkXx7T

"SNIP....

At a time when germs are growing more resistant to common antibiotics, many companies that are developing new versions of the drugs are hemorrhaging money and going out of business, gravely undermining efforts to contain the spread of deadly, drug-resistant bacteria.

Antibiotic start-ups like Achaogen and Aradigm have gone belly up in recent months, pharmaceutical behemoths like Novartis and Allergan have abandoned the sector and many of the remaining American antibiotic companies are teetering toward insolvency. One of the biggest developers of antibiotics, Melinta Therapeutics, recently warned regulators it was running out of cash.

Experts say the grim financial outlook for the few companies still committed to antibiotic research is driving away investors and threatening to strangle the development of new lifesaving drugs at a time when they are urgently needed.

“This is a crisis that should alarm everyone,” said Dr. Helen Boucher, an infectious disease specialist at Tufts Medical Center and a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria.

.....SNIP"

[CrispyQ]

1. "This is a crisis that should alarm everyone," ...

So true on so many fronts. Humanity is about to get punched in the face.

[Blue_true]

22. It does look like we are sealing off all escape hatches, doesn't it? nt

[Wounded Bear]

2. Capitalism at work, chasing the sexy drugs...

the boring shit doesn't matter. All it does is keep people alive. All the money is in sexy shit and making a name chasing obscure syndromes nobody has ever heard of.

We need to socialize this to something whose main purpose is keeping people alive, curing real diseases, and alleviating suffering instead of just making money for rich asshole investors.

[safeinOhio]

4. Plus 1.

Thanks.

[Wounded Bear]

6. Yeah, and while we're dreaming...

how about banning advertising on public media of drugs nobody can pronounce for shit nobody has ever heard of, too.

I guy can dream.

[safeinOhio]

7. and cut the patent time back

to where it was years ago.

[Hortensis]

21. How did all you guys get THIS out of that article?

Come on. This UNDERLINES the need for progressive government assistance in giant projects like developing new antibiotics, including before the next great pandemic.

The headline says startups trying to develop them are going bankrupt!

And Big Pharm backed off because the Republican-controlled government won't invest and provide the usual progressive guarantees and protections against the big risks of heavy losses involved. In others words -- NO progressive assistance.

That's the takeaway.

But here's another: EVERYONE who didn't vote to put government in control the progressive party (that's the Democrats) and to keep Republicans out of power in 2016 and 2018, and all the years before for that matter, effectively VOTED FOR THIS!

Imo, we also need an antibiotic for brain-eating bacteria. Before they destroy us.

[Blue_true]

23. Doctors at the University of Florida saved the life of a young man

whose brain was being attacked by flesh eating bacteria. They lowered his body temperature to the point where he was still alive but in a coma. The temperature reduction also put the flesh eating bacteria into a dormant state in which Doctors were able to attack it with regular antibiotics and kill it. Once the bacteria was dead, the young guy was brought out of the coma and survived.

[Hortensis]

37. :) Guessing Vibrio, not bacteria Politicus idiosus?

How wonderful that with modern medicine U of FL was able to save his life.

But climate change anyone? Warming waters are causing bacterial growth and people on the coasts to become dreadfully ill.

Next November either the Republican or Democratic Party is going to at least mostly control the federal government.

Past time for anyone who's voted irresponsibly in the past, including "symbolically" for someone who can't win, to realize that these are the consequences of our own irresponsibility. People need to start voting as if our lives and others we care about are at stake. Because they are.

[Blue_true]

41. The article said that it was brain eating bacteria. The young guy had been swimming.

His case was the first known case where the bacteria was killed and the patient recovered.

Climate change is causing increase reproduction in a lot of bad organisms, also the mosquito season here in Florida seems to be longer.

I totally agree with you on voting. Given how destructive the Republican Party has been, I have absolutely no clue why anyone that call themselves progressive wouldn't crawl to the polls if needed to vote for every democrat on the ballot. People like Susan Sarandon and Cornell West talk about a "revolution". They have been talking that nonsense since the seventies and all that got us were Reagan, Bush I, Bush II and now Trump. Democratic Presidents keep getting elected only to have to clean up the shit that the preceding republican left, then the "revolutionaries" blame the democrat for not making life pink ponies in the sky and free buffets for anyone that want one.

[paleotn]

8. That's damn right!

Someone wants to make lawn chairs or helium balloons in a strictly market driven economy? Sure. Knock yourselves out. But when it comes to people's lives and in this case, the incubation of monstrous drug resistant pandemics? Hell no. I doubt many of us want to go back to the 19th century when it comes to infectious disease, but that's exactly where we're headed, thanks to our blind allegiance to market economics in areas any sane person would recognize it doesn't belong.

[Nay]

12. Yep. How many times do we have to say, "Capitalism doesn't care if you die" before

people get it?

In fact, if capitalism can earn a dime for actually killing you, it will do so without even looking back.

[liberalhistorian]

16. This was quite true of

many German, American (I'm looking right at you, IBM) and international private companies who profited greatly from supplying the Nazi regime and/or from brutal slave labor in its factories in order to supply Nazi needs.

And it's true now of our private defense companies, the private companies that supply the needs of ICE and the border patrol (you know, little things like cages for children and non-climate-controlled buildings to warehouse thousands of migrants and refugees, etc.). And often any protest against these industries is labeled "un-American", as they have the right to make a buck, how and why and consequences be damned, profit uber alles. It's the American way!

[Duppers]

13. +100

Yet there are some folks dying from "obscure syndromes." But that research needs to be socialized too.

[Crunchy Frog]

3. Pharmaceuticals should be treated as a public utility.

At least the basic ones, and the ones that aren't particularly profitable.

Big corporations can focus on blockbuster boner pills.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

18. perhaps we need something in health as NASA is to A & S

[karynnj]

24. Increase funding to National Institute of Health

In fact,imagine if they could review and find the proposed drugs promising, perhaps they could give grants to the failing startups. Possibly for a cap on price if a drug is successful and is produced. A real private/public effort.

[paleotn]

40. Yep. Research is government funded for the most part....

and produced in a government contract structure similar to NASA, DoD, etc. Not perfect, but beats the hell out of the free market royally fucking up and half or more of us dying from a black plague like pandemic.

[paleotn]

5. Rec +1000 You beat me to it.

Quite possibly the most frightening article I've read...maybe ever. The kicker is these drugs aren't available for the rich or anyone else who needs them to save their lives if they're left to languish because it's unprofitable to complete development, manufacture and market. A complete and total failure of market economics when it comes to healthcare, if even the rich can't access life saving drugs. And the funny thing about drug resistant pathogens...they don't give two shits who you are or how much money you have. They're an equal opportunity killer.

But God forbid guvament get involved in healthcare in any way, shape or form. Market economics. That's the solution! The solution to everything!

THIS is why market capitalism without significant and in some cases massive government intervention DOES NOT WORK in healthcare. Period. End of Fucking Memo.

[hedda_foil]

36. Market capitalism without significant government regulation does not work PERIOD.

[paleotn]

39. I wouldn't go that far....In most markets.....

government need only set the basic rules and act as referee. All governments do that and for the most part, market forces work just fine within the confines of commons sense. Except...in the areas of needs like food, water, shelter...the commons, and for things that can easily kill us if producers are left to their darker angels. The difference between flower vases and cars for instance. It's a sliding scale of government regulation based on good sense, rooted in a realistic understanding of human nature.

Healthcare is one area where it does not work at all, no matter how tightly the market is controlled. Market forces completely break down when it comes to people's health and lives. In the case of the NYT article, they break down to the point that even rich people are screwed. Right now, the same drug resistant pathogen could kill a homeless person and Bill Gates and there's nothing Gates could do about it no matter how rich he is. That's off the rails to the point even a right winger can understand.

[CousinIT]

9. Well. It appears then that the 100000% markup on their drugs is actually NOT going to research

But rather into some wealthy PharmaBro CEO's pockets or to the damn shareholders.

Humanity be damned.

[NBachers]

30. This is my take-away, too.

[MarcA]

10. A failing system due to money worship. n/t

[Lindsay]

11. That pretty much sums up

a whole lot of issues these days.

[Blue_true]

25. You hit it on the mark. Big, rich companies can't stand to risk losing a penny,

so they run away from anything where a big profit isn't right around the corner.

[PatrickforO]

14. This research sounds like a role for government!

The profit motive does not belong in the production of lifesaving drugs.

The profit motive does not belong in the provision of health care.

Those things are both in the realm of public good, and so should be funded publicly.

[Blue_true]

27. Government used to fund that type of research.

Once a product was in sight, private companies took over. Remember republicans ridiculing research on lizards that somehow survived hot deserts, of amoeba that survived under ice? Well, such efforts were the basic research that frequently led to "wonder" drugs or therapies down the line. But Jim and Julie Sixpack living in some leafy suburb only say the republicans' arguments (or idiocy) and voted republican.

Government money that used to go toward medical research that had no products in sight, but which was in the public interest is all but nonexistent today. We see "emergency" funding when something like a mosquito borne illness like Zika strike and scare people shitless, but not at other times when there is no crisis, just longterm public health protection.

[stopdiggin]

15. perhaps also a human element at play

(good article, applegrove)
more from link, NYTimes:

The DISARM Act, a bill introduced in Congress earlier this year, would direct Medicare to reimburse hospitals for new and critically important antibiotics. The bill has bipartisan support but has yet to advance.

One of its sponsors, Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said some of the reluctance to push it forward stemmed from the political sensitivity over soaring prescription drug prices. “There is some institutional resistance to any legislation that provides financial incentives to drug companies,” he said.

-snip-

The industry faces another challenge: After years of being bombarded with warnings against profligate use of antibiotics, doctors have become reluctant to prescribe the newest medications, limiting the ability of companies to recoup the investment spent to discover the compounds and win regulatory approval. And in their drive to save money, many hospital pharmacies will dispense cheaper generics even when a newer drug is far superior.

“You’d never tell a cancer patient ‘Why don’t you try a 1950s drug first and if doesn’t work, we’ll move on to one from the 1980s,” said Kevin Outterson, the executive director of CARB-X, a government-funded nonprofit that provides grants to companies working on antimicrobial resistance. “We do this with antibiotics and it’s really having an adverse effect on patients and the marketplace.”

One takeaway here -- is that part of the "marketplace" problem highlighted is that consumers themselves do not want to pay for the new drugs -- and, at the same time, they're also not too keen on having someone else (read government) subsidize their cost either.

Which leaves us where? Companies developing brilliant (and desperately needed) new medical solutions -- finding almost no market for such -- and going broke. And the public showing little sympathy or appetite for solutions to the problem. Perhaps foolishly (but that's sometimes how we foolish humans measure things).

[applegrove]

20. Thanks for highlighting this.

[moondust]

17. Where's Shkreli?

I'll bet he could git'er done!

Oh heck, he's sittin' in prison for gitin'er done. Sorry.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

34. What are you talking about ?

Martin Shkreli didn't get ANYTHING done unless you consider massive fraud to be an accomplishment. His company did not break any new ground nor did it establish any new medication, treatments or therapies for anything. All he did was take an existing medication and jack up the price beyond reason. How is that an accomplishment ?

He is exactly where he deserves to be. In penitentiary.

[moondust]

35. Sense of humor not working today?

[ismnotwasm]

19. This has been on going

Went to education days on this 10 years ago. No money to be made in antibiotics.

[roamer65]

26. They will start using chemotherapy drugs when the antibiotics stop working.

Fluoroquinlone antibiotics were originally designed to be chemotherapy drugs, but when they failed at that task, they were then employed as antibiotics.

Doxorubicin has antibiotic properties, but as a chemo drug it’s nickname is the “red devil” for a reason.

It will be like the days before penicillin, when the cure was as bad or worse than disease itself.

[Blue_true]

28. My guess is that if we have a pandemic, we will start to see full strength penicillin.

Most of the penicillin drugs on the market today are way watered down, and even they are classed as "high risk" (get into a health insurance plan that track medicines, you will see what I am talking about). Full strength penicillin kills shit, but it knocks people on their asses, so there is hesitancy to roll it out.

[marybourg]

29. As someone who has had c. diff colitis from an antibiotic,

and who is now trying to flush out an incipient u.t.i. and hoping not to have to take an antibiotic for it, I’d say the day has already come.

[roamer65]

33. C diff is a toughie.

First line is metronidazole (aka Flagyl). It hate that stuff.

Good luck to you.

[Hoyt]

31. Candidates will still rail against drug companies, even those that really aren't taking advantage

of things in all cases. Have too many losing meds, and it's tough to keep the doors open.

[hatrack]

32. Top priority for drug companies:

Finding drugs that will help wealthy old people:

1. Look younger
2. Grow hair
3. Fuck

Antibiotics? Feh.
Vaccines? Puh-leeze.
Affordable drugs that deal with bilharzia, malaria, dengue, filariasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease or tuberculosis? You're joking, right?

[pecosbob]

38. Yet there certainly seems to be no shortage of antibiotics for livestock...I wonder why that is?

[notinkansas]

42. Cry me a river

Pharmaceutical companies are drowning in profits.

I call BS.