A number of different proposals and research and development (R&D) models for stimulating antibiotic innovation have been proposed, each differing with respect to characteristics such as the type and timing of innovation incentives and the degree of governmental public control of the market. For...

The problem of antimicrobial resistance has led some infectious disease experts and their professional societies to propose the use of transferable intellectual property rights (wildcard patents) and patent term extensions as methods to encourage antimicrobial Ramp;D. We evaluate recent...

Two federal judges now tell us that the federal health law's individual mandate is unconstitutional. Three others disagree, and soon we will start to hear from appellate courts. But what if we put the legal arguments aside for the moment and focus on the real question: what happens to health...

Concerns about a dearth of antibiotic innovation have spurred calls for incentives to speed the development of new antibiotics. Our data demonstrates that many of the new molecular entity (NME) antibiotics introduced in the last 3 decades were withdrawn from the market, at more than triple the...

Despite the life-saving ability of antibiotics and their importance as a key enabler of all of modern health care, their effectiveness is now threatened by a rising tide of resistance. Unfortunately, the antibiotic pipeline does not match health needs because of challenges in discovery and...

Antibacterial resistance is a growing global problem. According to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least 2 million people acquire serious infections with bacteria that are resistant to one or more of antibacterial drugs designed to treat...

As resistance to antibiotics continues to grow, there is a well-recognized misalignment between the clinical need for new antibiotics and the incentives for their development. The returns from investment in antibiotics research and development (R&D) are perceived as too small. Partly as a...

Antibiotics are powerful drugs that prevent many deaths each year. Modern medicine relies on them as a safety net. Many invasive medical procedures would be much more dangerous without effective antibiotics. Global trade, travel and security would be threatened by a resurgence of untreatable...

When I chose the title, Counterfeit Drugs: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, some of my colleagues at this symposium blanched. They understood counterfeit drugs as Bad and Ugly, but resisted categorizing any counterfeit drug as Good. This article is intended to be provocative, challenging some of...

On innovation grounds, pharmaceutical patents are unnecessary in low income populations, since such markets cannot do much to support global pharmaceutical profits. The public health needs of low income populations require patented drugs to be manufactured at the marginal cost of production,...