I have something important to say and I suspect it will be quite a long rant (that has nothing to do with mental illness etc). I hope that's ok.

So, there's this thing called phage therapy. It's a method were you use bacteriophages (viruses that specifically attack bacteria) to treat bacterial infections instead of using antibiotics. Since antibiotic resistance is an increasing threat to public health (feel free to read this summary of World Health Organization's report on antibiotic resistance: WHO | WHO?s first global report on antibiotic resistance reveals serious, worldwide threat to public health) phage therapy is rather interesting. Right now it's only approved in Russia and Georgia but there is some research going on in western countries as well.

Phage therapy seems to have a lot of advantages in comparison to antibiotics (it's much more specific, it's easier to overcome resistance, doesn't seem to have a lot of side-effects etc) but of course there are some problems as well. Anyway, I've read a lot about it today and I read this earlier: "... Additionally, patent issues (specifically on living organisms) may complicate distribution for pharmaceutical companies wishing to have exclusive rights to their 'invention', making it unlikely that a for-profit corporation will invest capital in the widespread application of this technology."

And:

"Funding for phage therapy research and clinical trials is generally insufficient and difficult to obtain, since it is a lengthy and complex process to patent bacteriophage products."

It's all about money. It doesn't matter if it's pharmaceuticals, what kind of research is being funded or something else. It's all about money. It angers me. Maybe I'm being naive but I don't see how money is more important than treatment. I don't see how money is more important than developing new antibiotics or things we can replace antibiotics with. According to experts we're approaching a "post-antibiotic era" where we, if we keep this up, might not be able to treat diseases caused by bacterial infections that we'd normally treat with antibiotics (pneumonia, tuberculosis, urinary tract infections, sepsis etc) due to the fact that the bacteria will be resistant to the antibiotics available.

During a bacteriology lecture earlier this week our professor told us that in order to avoid the "post-antibiotic era" we'd need to develop about one new antibiotic per year. Well, we're a bit behind since it's been about 30 years since the last antibiotic was developed (excluding the different varieties of already existing antibiotics).

Money. Greed preventing research and new medical breakthroughs saddens me.

Rant over.