This new post by Kevin Outterson appears on the Health Affairs Blog, as part of part of a series stemming from the Third Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 30, 2015.
Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer of England, warns that we are approaching an antibiotic apocalypse. A former chief economist at Goldman Sachs estimates that unless dramatic action is taken now, antimicrobial resistance could kill 50 million people a year and cause $100 trillion in cumulative economic damages.
In the US, dire warnings have issued from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and the President himself through an Executive Order on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in September 2014 (summary here). The President’s new budget asks for $1.2 billion to be spent on antibiotic resistance. […]
Read the full post here.