Skip to main content

Drug resistant infections

The statistics on the number of Americans dying from infections - and in particular infections acquired in hospitals - are staggering. About 2 million Americans acquired an infection last year while in the hospital!

I tell my friends that you can't leave someone alone in a hospital - that they are the most dangerous places in the country. Generally, my comments are met with skepticism - until they or a relative are in the hospital. Invariably, they report back to me that I was right; there aren't enought nurses, wrong medications or meals show up, something is unsanitary, and so on.

We need some kind of a program to encourage the pharmaceutical industry to tackle infections. They just aren't interested any more - the risks and rewards greatly favor chronic illnesses where drugs can be used for years or decades - e.g. Lipitor - than for acute, short-lived drug regimens. The FDA - who I haven't trusted in years - needs to be assertive here - and so does all branches of government.

While I am an open deficit hawk - raise my tax rate a half point and let all that tax revenue go to support a search for new antibiotics.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stimulus Plan

Mr. President: The House stimulus bill is awful. Dangerous. Counter-productive. It has a very high probability of making things worse!. Your man Rahm Emanuel is supposed to be a tough guy: turn him loose on the House Dems - they are selling you down the river. Some simple tests: the spending will improve long-term productivity; the spending will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and the spending will happen fast; very, very fast. There may need to be some legislation to enable spending without years of environmental review. For example, spending on wind farms would improve long-run productivity and reduce dependence on foreign oil. But let's say the wind farm is a couple of miles offshore. You can't have environmental groups stopping the development to see if some fish will be harmed. This spending has to happen now. And, no tax cuts with the possible exception of AMT. People aren't going to spend any tax savings; they are going to pay their credit card bills or r...
10 comments
Read more

No Steve No

To:Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer: Please, please don't spend my money on Yahoo. Spend $4 billion per year for the next 10 years building something new and better. This has to now be an ego deal, not an economic deal. If you withdraw the bid, YHOO is a $15 stock. You are too smart for this. Many times the best deals are the ones you don't make. This is one of those times. Don't spend my money on this. Sincerely, gene
1 comment
Read more

So Who Wins?

Every recession plants the seeds for economic advantage in the future recovery. In the very tough 1973-1974 recession, prices fell so low that it enabled the creation of the leveraged buyout industry. With many manufacturing companies in particular trading at 3-4 times cash flow, new market entrants like KKR, Forstmann Little and Dyson Kisner Moran came in and created gigantic wealth for themselves and early investors. In the 1991-1992 downturn, engendered in part by the massive office space overbuilding funded by Savings and Loans (Resolution Trust Co, anyone?) made it possible for telcom and internet start-ups in Austin, San Jose, Northern VA, Boston's Route 128, Dallas, etc. to rent offices at a fraction of the cost had those communities not been overbuilt. And the 2001-02 downturn gave us cheap fiber and bandwidth, and bargain-priced software to feed productivity gains in corporations everywhere. So, where is the upside? At this moment, all that I can project with some confid...
Post a Comment
Read more