Opinion: The FDA’s misguided thinking on antibiotics
The public misunderstands antibiotic-resistant infections — and so does the FDA.
It’s easy to criticize the FDA, whether you think the agency makes it too hard for innovative treatments to help the patients who need them or that Big Pharma holds too much sway over decisions. We’ll avoid that fight and instead focus on why the public, with the FDA’s help, has misunderstood why so many Americans die from resistant infections every year. In short: The Food and Drug Administration focuses on bugs instead of patients.
Only a minority of Americans who die of infections die because the bacteria causing their infections were resistant to antibiotics. Instead, studies show that as many as 95% of Americans who die of infections had treatments that FDA considered effective for them. Yet the focus on rushing new drugs to market is in hopes they will help the 5% instead of helping the 95% survive their infections. Meanwhile, deaths from antibiotic resistance have not increased, but the number of Americans dying from all types of infections has far outpaced those from resistant bugs.
