New Antibiotics—Resistance Is Futile

PLoS Biology | http://biology.plosjournals.org By next summer, more than 40% of Streptococcus pneumoniae strains in the United States will resist both penicillin and erythromycin, according to a recent prediction from the Harvard School of Public Health. The forecast, based on mathematical modeling, was published in the spring of 2003. It’s too early to tell whether that prediction is precisely on track, according to the senior author on that paper, Marc Lipsitch. But no one doubts that multidrug resistance in this common bug—responsible for diseases that range from sinus trouble and ear infections to meningitis and pneumonia—is speeding up. It is the certain fate of all antibacterials to be fought off eventually by the pathogens they target. The fact that the process is accelerating has been alarming public health offi cials for some time, especially in the United States. We need new ways to defeat disease, and we will need them forever.