High volume sales of antibiotics drive evolutionary resistance. So why do we allow most of the supply chain to make money based on the volume of sales?
This wasteful practice might be tolerated if antibiotic innovation was easy and plentiful. But in the world we live in, alternative business models are needed for antibiotics. See the quick summary in Nature Medicine:
What is indisputable is that the status quo is untenable. An estimated 48,000 people die in Europe and the US each year from infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and this number is very likely to increase in years to come. “This is a global issue and a moral issue that needs to be dealt with in collaboration,” says Otto Cars, of the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control in Solna. “Delinkage is a necessary element [to] get rid of market-driven overuse. We need simply to find another model, and that is a responsibility for everyone to realize.”
