Antibiotic surprise | Somewhat Reasonable

Link: http://blog.heartland.org/2014/01/antibiotic-surprise/

The thing about antibiotic resistance is that it takes resources for a bacterium to maintain it.  If you change antibiotics and attack from a different direction, not only does the bacterium have to re-tool, it's already weakened from spending the resources to build the first adaptation. Given enough time, it would lose the genes for the first adaptation to save resources, and then suddenly, the original antibiotic works again.

The trick is to have enough alternatives in stock to force bacteria to give up at least one of their adaptations.

Almost everyone these days uncritically accepts that the solution to antibiotic-resistant disease is to use fewer antibiotics. What about using more antibiotics? More varieties that is.
When doctors found penicillin was losing its efficacy as our first line of defense against bacterial infections, the medical community didn’t throw up its hands and use less. New antibiotics were developed! And thankfully so.
No… not stronger antibiotics. New varieties were developed that kept us ahead of the bacteria that ail us, humans and animals alike, to the point where doctors and veterinarians now have well in excess of 100 antibiotics to rely upon in fighting infection.
But now, thanks to overregulation resulting from tax-funded lobbying by anti-antibiotic, naturopathic, homeopathic, sustainability and organic activists, pharmaceutical companies have largely abandoned the development of new antibiotics. It simply does not pay to bring new antibiotic strains to market in the current regulatory environment. Pharmaceutical companies find it much simpler and more profitable to focus instead on treating phony ailments like attention-deficit disorder, obesity and erectile dysfunction.