Economic Solutions

Global economist Lord Jim O’Neill leads a pivotal section in BEATING SUPERBUGS, uniting economic and government/private foundation strategies for fighting antibiotic resistance. O'Neill's UK-commissioned report outlines workable new plans to finance scientists and pharmaceutical companies, especially in the hugely expensive R&D phase of finding new antibiotics. The report's proposals have gained universal UN acceptance and are in process of being implemented around the world. Only the partnership of governments and private foundations with pharmaceutical companies--the only reliable producers of antibiotics--can meet the advancing superbug challenge. Big Pharma cannot, and will not, do it alone.

"As an old hedge fund friend of mine said when I explained this to him, 'Forty billion dollars to save the loss of one hundred trillion?' He said, 'That's a return of two and a half thousand percent.' And he joked that even Warren Buffett would be proud of that . . . ."

Terence James O'Neill, Baron O'Neill of Gatley, is a British economist best known for coining "BRICS," the acronym that stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—the five rapidly developing countries that have come to symbolize the shift in global economic power away from the developed G7 economies.