Nasal Bacteria Pump Out a Potential New Antibiotic That Kills MRSA

Barring lugdunin from being patented while providing no public funding would incentivise this group to withhold publication until they thought they'd found every commercially-reasonably derivation.

Having said that, a patent for general anti-biotic+matter is probably valid and it's unlikely that this compound will be used for much else.

They'll probably make some money out of it, to fund more research, but hopefully any deal with pharmaceutical companies should have some pricing clause to make this widely affordable to public health services.

I would expect the patent to be on the process for isolating or synthesizing the compound.

And then we get to complain about the excess bureaucracy in healthcare!

It's possible to find middle ground, and I think comprehensive IT systems for all doctors with real-time forbidden drugs lists and epidemia tracking would make this much easier.

It's even possible to divide hospitals into "different drug is forbidden here", and when someone has MRSA - put him in a hospital where the drugs that doesn't work on him - are banned anyway. And use "last ditch" drugs only in these hospitals.

And of course the main thing is to stop abusing antibiotics for agriculture.

Here's a particularly frustrating example.

http://bjgp.org/content/early/2016/07/05/bjgp16X686125

> Acute infective conjunctivitis is common among preschool children. Public Health England (PHE) recommends that children with conjunctivitis do not need to be excluded from child care, but childcare providers are required to determine their own sickness policies and prior research suggests that children are often excluded until they are treated or have recovered. How the content of these policies impacts on prescribing decisions has not been quantified.

[...]

> Acute infective conjunctivitis (AIC) is a common condition in preschool children.1 It is usually mild and self-limiting, often with no requirement for treatment or a doctor’s appointment.2 Evidence suggests, however, that parents and guardians are advised by childcare providers (CPs) to take their children with conjunctivitis to their GP for assessment.3–5 Furthermore, some CPs will not permit affected children to return to child care until antibiotics have been prescribed,3,4,6,7 thus parents are obtaining antibiotics to get their child readmitted. A situation in which antibiotics are prescribed for non-clinical reasons is difficult to justify and requires further investigation.

> Although most cases (50–75%) of AIC are bacterial in origin,8 the aetiology is difficult to determine clinically and only 36% of doctors are confident in differentiating between viral and bacterial conjunctivitis.9,10 In bacterial conjunctivitis, there may be some clinical benefit obtained from topical antibiotics;11 however, this benefit is perhaps not seen in children and topical chloramphenicol shortens the duration of symptoms by only 0.3 days.2 Despite this, most clinicians usually prescribe antibiotics for AIC.10

Not the case at all. Biggest use of antibiotics today is in food production(agriculture etc.), not in hospitals. And it's also completely unregulated.

"The problem is that evolution is out-researching us"

Evolution also has a simple rule: "Use it or lose it". So don't be afraid. There are ways around acquired immunity.

The bottom line is that we need to use newly developed antibiotics more carefully, continue researching new ones, and no Spanish flu like incident will happen (even without considering that the Spanish flu was a virus, not a bacterium).