The Drugs Don't Work - A Penguin Special by Professor Dame Sally Davies,
the Chief Medical Officer for England If we fail to act, we are looking
at an almost unthinkable scenario where antibiotics no longer work and
we are cast back into the dark ages of medicine where treatable
infections and injuries will kill once again (David Cameron, Prime
Minister) Antibiotics add, on average, twenty years to our lives. For
over seventy years, since the manufacture of penicillin in 1943, we have
survived extraordinary operations and life-threatening infections. We
are so familiar with these wonder drugs that we take them for granted.
The truth is that we have been abusing them: as patients, as doctors, as
travellers, in our food. No new class of antibacterial has been
discovered for twenty six years and the bugs are fighting back. If we do
not take responsibility now, in a few decades we may start dying from
the most commonplace of operations and ailments that can today be
treated easily. This short book, which will be enjoyed by readers of An
Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore and Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre, will be
the subject of a TEDex talk given by Professor Dame Sally Davies at the
Royal Albert Hall. Professor Dame Sally C. Davies is the Chief Medical
Officer for England and the first woman to hold the post. As CMO she is
the independent advisor to the Government on medical matters with
particular interest in Public Health and Research. She holds a number of
international advisory positions and is an Emeritus Professor at
Imperial College. Dr Jonathan Grant is a Principal Research Fellow and
former President at RAND Europe, a not-for-profit public policy research
institute. His main research interests are on health R&D policy and the
use of research and evidence in policymaking. He was formerly Head of
Policy at The Wellcome Trust. He received his PhD from the Faculty of
Medicine, University of London, and his B.Sc. (Econ) from the London
School of Economics. Professor Mike Catchpole is an internationally
recognized expert in infectious diseases and the Director of Infectious
Disease Surveillance and Control at Public Health England. He has
coordinated many national infectious disease outbreak investigations and
is an advisor to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
He is also a visiting professor at Imperial College.
