Medical researchers have known for decades that the pipeline for new drugs to stave of bacterial infections would one day run dry. That day is now at hand. In some cases, doctors have no drugs to give their patients for what once were treatable infections but are now life-threatening. Although researchers have many good leads, the bigger problem is a lack of financial incentives to bring new treatments through the drug-development gantlet. “When I signed up to be an infectious disease specialist 25 years ago, I never thought it would come to this,” says Helen Boucher, a physician at Tufts Medical Center in Boston and director of its infectious disease fellowship and heart transplant programs. Boucher has been a leading advocate for finding ways of investing in new treatments. She spoke with Newsweek about the drug-resistance problem and how we might dig our way out of it.
BY DAVID H. FREEDMAN
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