A Placebo to Prevent Super-Resistant Bacteria

The Problem: Many people receive antibiotics when they don’t need them, risking the development of super-resistant bacteria.

The Solution: Prescribe a placebo antibiotic instead.

With Coronavirus forcing the world into lockdown, it is a stark reminder of the dangers humanity faces from the outbreak of new diseases. One risk that has not been effectively addressed for years is that of super-resistant bacteria.

A risk of their development comes from patients taking antibiotics when they don’t need them, such as for viral infections. Many patients still insist on taking antibiotics, even though they will have no effect, and it has proven difficult to stop this.

My solution is therefore very simple; create an antibiotic placebo specifically for viral infections. Since current antibiotics have no impact on viruses, the fact that the placebo is not offering any medical benefit to the patient is not a problem, overcoming the most common concern over the use of placebos.

A placebo in this case would make the patient feel better – because they would think they were getting antibiotics – without endangering humanity by increasing the risk of super resistant bacteria.

Even better, as the placebo would cost close to nothing to produce, all the revenue from its sale could be used to fund research into developing new anti-bacterial medicines.

So instead of patients who take antibiotics with a virus increasing the risk of super-resistant bacteria, they would instead be funding research into new medicines to keep any future scourges at bay, quite a turnaround.

The medical profession would have to come on side and agree to prescribe the placebo to patients without disclosing that it was a placebo, which could cause some difficulties, but is not insurmountable, and government drug agencies would have to agree to certify the medicine for use under these specific circumstances.

Since there are many medicines already on the market which sell well but have questionable impacts on people’s health, it shouldn’t be difficult to launch another one. Only in this case the dark arts of pharmaceutical marketing would have a more positive upside, generating revenue to fund research into saving us from the scourge of new bacterial infections.