Pharmaceutical patents last only for twenty years, but that includes the period of clinical trials. Manufacturers usually have just five years of exclusive patent protection.” In consequence, all but two of the eighteen largest pharmaceutical companies in the world have given up the search for new antibiotics. People take antibiotics for only a week or two. Much better to focus on drugs like statins or antidepressants that people can take more or less indefinitely. “No sane company will develop the next antibiotic,” Kinch says. The problem needn’t be hopeless, but it does need to be addressed.
...more
