title: Antibiotic effectiveness: balancing conservation against innovation.
abstract: Antibiotic effectiveness is a natural societal resource that is diminished by antibiotic use. As with other such assets, keeping it available requires both conservation and innovation. Conservation encompasses making the best use of current antibiotic effectiveness by reducing demand through vaccination, infection control, diagnostics, public education, incentives for clinicians to prescribe fewer antibiotics, and restrictions on access to newer, last-resort antibiotics. Innovation includes improving the efficacy of current drugs and replenishing effectiveness by developing new drugs. In this paper, I assess the relative benefits and costs of these two approaches to maintaining our ability to treat infections.
authors.affiliation: Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, Washington, DC, USA; Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton, NJ, USA; Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi, India. ramanan@cddep.org.
authors.forename: Ramanan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Laxminarayan
mesh_terms: D000822:Animal Husbandry; D000818:Animals; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000145:classification; D003140:Communicable Disease Control; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy; D024881:Drug Resistance, Bacterial / Q000187:drug effects / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D058751:Livestock; D014611:Vaccination
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents