It sounds like something out of a science fiction B-movie or a Steven King novel. Out-of-control superbugs that are resistant to anything humans can throw at them. Unfortunately, it's no fiction. It's deadly serious. The problem is so serious that the World Health Organization recently warned of an impending drug-resistance crisis if humanity does not do something quickly. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan forecasted the approach of a "post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated."

The WHO called on governments and researchers to step up funding and discovery of new medicines to take the place of antimicrobial drugs that have been rendered ineffective or useless through the evolution of drug-resistant diseases.

Government incentives are apparently needed. The profit motive does not always work in this case. From a purely business standpoint, antibiotics are not always profitable for pharmaceutical companies. Antibiotics work fast, so there's not as large a market as for drugs that treat long-term conditions. Antibiotics need to be used in a restricted way because of danger of creating more resistant strains of bacteria and they require separate FDA approval for each infection being targeted. So, there is not much to take the place of current antibiotics that are increasingly ineffective.

Today, there are only two Big Pharma companies, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, with active antibiotic R&D programs, UPI recently reported, citing the Infectious Diseases Society of America. In 1990, there were nearly 20.

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