A panel of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) experts has recommended that an experimental antibiotic made by Cempra Inc. be approved, but just barely. [1]
The panel voted 7-6 in favor of the drug, saying the effectiveness of the new antibiotic outweighed risks of liver toxicity seen in many studies. The FDA does not have to follow the panel’s recommendation, but it typically does.
Scientists announced recently they’ve developed an antibiotic from a fragment of a protein found in human breast milk, and they believe it could be the solution to drug-resistant superbugs. [1]
Antibiotic resistance threatens to send medicine back to the Dark Ages. Imagine a world in which illnesses that used to be easily treated with antibiotics kill scores of people with impunity. Picture developing an infection after surgery and there is virtually no drug to treat it.
Cancer rates are increasing, and the World Health Organization (WHO) said in 2014 that cancer cases were expected to surge 57% worldwide over the next 20 years. It’s a health crisis in the making, but scientists are warning there could be an even bigger threat to human health: antimicrobial resistance.
Nature has provided thousands of natural medicines over millennia. Most people are unaware but virtually all pharmaceutical medications originally came from the plants of the Earth. After they were proven effective in treating various ailments, the Pharmaceutical Industry then created synthetic variants which they could patent. In this way they retained the exclusive rights to earn revenues from their patents over a specific period of time.
