Almost all papers and reviews dealing with infectious diseases stress that new classes of antibiotics are badly needed to treat the increasing number of common and emerging cases of infection due to antibiotic-resistant organisms, be they bacteria, viruses, or parasites. What happened to the optimism of the late 1960s when the then Surgeon General of the United States announced “we can close the book on infectious diseases”? For some years now it has been clear that the situation with respect to the treatment of common bacterial infections, especially in hospitals, is poor, if not dire.1 Physicians have a diminishing armamentarium of antibiotics available for clinical use; most of the older compounds are ineffective against present-day resistant strains, and reinforcements are few and far between. The few novel compounds available are reserved for last-resort use and only in critical care units of hospitals.
If we are to continue with the current ...
