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IDSA supports reintroduction of GAIN Act
The bill is intended to encourage pharmaceutical companies to create new antibiotics.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America supports the Generating Antibiotics Incentives Now Act and said it is an excellent starting point to begin to address the urgent public health crisis of antibiotic resistance.
The number of new antibiotics being developed has decreased in recent years. In 1990, there were nearly 20 pharmaceutical companies with large, strong and active antibiotic research and development programs, compared with two that remain in 2011.
The legislation was introduced by US Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., and is co-sponsored by Reps. Gene Green, D-Texas; Diana DeGette, D-Colo.; Anna Eshoo, D-Calif.; Mike Rogers, R-Mich.; Ed Whitfield, R-Ky.; and John Shimkus, R-Ill. The bill is intended to encourage pharmaceutical companies to create desperately needed new antibiotics, according to an IDSA press release.
Through the Generating Antibiotics Incentives Now (GAIN) Act, Gingrey and the bill’s co-sponsors have provided a strong foundation upon which to build, IDSA leaders said, adding that the bill will likely need to be improved further to ensure that antibiotic manufacturers will have sufficient motivation to produce novel, new drugs.
“We can’t make drug companies produce new antibiotics, they have to want it,” Robert Guidos, JD, IDSA vice president of public policy and government relations, said in a press release. “Given the public health crisis we are facing, we likely will have only this one chance. We have to be sure Congress chooses a winning approach, or an additional decade may be wasted, resulting in countless lives lost.”
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