This article appears in the Witness section of the Winter 2019 issue of the New Humanist. Subscribe today.
Antibiotic resistance is one of the most worrying trends of the modern age. If antibiotics are taken inappropriately, harmful bacteria living inside the body can become resistant to the antibiotics, which means the medicines may not work when really needed, rendering formerly treatable infections life-threatening. For several years, policy-makers have urged people to take antibiotics only when necessary, as over-prescription is a major driver of resistant bacteria.
New figures released by Public Health England show that these calls have begun to be heeded: antibiotic consumption in England had reduced since 2014, when it hit a 20-year peak. But despite these improvements, the figures also show that antibiotic-resistant bloodstream infections – the most potentially serious kind – rose by a third between 2014 and 2018.
Perhaps this is a sign that we need a more comprehensive overhaul of the system in order to effectively address increasing antibiotic resistance. In the spring 2019 New Humanist, Peter Forbes argued that one solution might be found in phage therapy: “Phages offer a way beyond the impasse of antibiotic resistance, because of the precision of the interactions between them and bacteria. Scientists can engineer these interactions to target bacteria in a way that antibiotics can’t: to disable vital portions of their DNA.”
Other steps to address the impending crisis might include reform of the health sector. Most drug discovery is done by private companies, and it is difficult to make money from antibiotics, since responsible use of them means limiting prescriptions and therefore limiting sales. For this reason, Big Pharma has all but pulled out of the market. While smaller biotech firms are making exciting progress towards new classes of antibiotics, the financial and regulatory hurdles to getting these to market are almost impossible to clear. Solving this problem means strong commitments from governments, as well as significant international cooperation: bacteria do not observe borders.
