Antibiotic-resistant bacteria "could kill 39m people by 2050" amidrising drug resistance.

This problem is mostly avoidable. It is caused by various sorts ofcarelessness in the use of antibiotics.

Few new antibiotics are developed, because drug companies are nolonger interested in them.

They are no longer led by people whosebackground was in medicine and thought that curing disease was a goalin itself. Now they want to develop "the next Viagra", something thatmillions of people will take when they are not sick.

For-profit drug development is corrupting in many ways.

One consequence is that our systems of medicine and drug developmentno longer encourage people to make curing disease their goal.

We should replace the system driven by lust for monopoly megaprofitswith a system of government funding for finding new drugs that willnot be covered by monopolies.