I think that the better than the beatles bit might give way in this case. I'm no medic but I suspect that there are many antibiotic compounds that have failed e

I think that the better than the beatles bit might give way in this case. I'm no medic but I suspect that there are many antibiotic compounds that have failed early trials due to side effects that might be resurrected in a context where 10,000's of people a year die due to resistance. I think that the regulator might get much less cautious and the fact that the old drugs don't work may make things easier. Also at the moment one issue is that the market for anti-resistant drugs is very small, and current antibiotics are rather cheap. So the spreadsheets show no business case, when this grows to millions of doses a year then at $1k a dose so $10k a course and over 20 years of patent life a $2bn investment starts to look ok. State intervention should be used to shorten and cheapen that path so that we get less of the actual death without real need business up front. I read with dismay the FP9 preparation reports which stress cohesion as an objective of research funding and I look forward (grimly) to watching the waste of funds that could lead to life saving treatment that this policy will precipitate.