[interphen] Workshop on Ethics and Antimicrobial Resistance: Brocher, Switzerland 27th-28th March

From: Angus Dawson <a.j.dawson@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: InterPHEN <INTERPHEN@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2014 17:30:39 +0000
Dear All,
This may be of interest to some:
http://www.brocher.ch/en/events/70/the-ethics-of-antimicrobial-resistance-symposium/For

See link for programme:
http://www.brocher.ch/content/events/cda4e_Meeting_Programme.pdf
b/w,
Angus.


The rapid emergence of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) over the past decades 
presents health care systems with serious challenges and threatens their 
ability to effectively treat serious bacterial infections. The term 
"antimicrobial resistance" describes “the ability of a bacterium to survive and 
even replicate during a course of antibiotic treatment with a specific 
antibiotic” (Mossialos & Morel, European Observatory on Health Systems and 
Policies, 2008). Currently, there is a lack of research into new drugs, 
resulting in a worrying depletion of the arsenal of effective antibiotics. This 
decrease in R&D is due to a number of reasons, including greater expected 
return on investment for pharmaceutical products that manage chronic 
conditions, the need for expensive basic research to develop novel action 
mechanisms for future classes of antibiotics, and the potential risk of a drug 
becoming ineffective before the expiry of patent protection, in the case of 
rapidly progressing AMR (Herrman & Laxminarayan, Annual Review of Resource 
Economics 4(2), 2010). As a result, for some types of bacteria only a single 
class of antibiotics remains effective, and recent developments have sparked 
fears that even these antibiotics of last-resort may soon become ineffective, 
rendering some bacterial infections essentially untreatable. This has prompted 
both the World Health Organization and the EU to warn of the dawn of a 
post-antibiotic age (Millar, J Med Ethics, 37(3), 2011). It is, however, not 
merely total drug resistance that is of concern. Already, antibiotic-resistant 
infections kill more than 25.000 people a year in the EU alone, according to 
estimates from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC, 
The Bacterial Challenge: Time to react, 2009). AMR raises a number of ethical 
concerns, many of which relate to the fair distribution of an increasingly 
scarce resource, both within and across generations. However, since AMR has 
also led to the (re-)emergence of bacterial diseases, such as TB that are 
difficult to treat, ethical challenges also arise in the context of disease 
management and infection control, for example by enforcing treatment or 
isolation of contagious patients. While the topic of AMR is widely discussed in 
the medical literature, its ethical implications have so far received little 
attention. The proposed symposium would provide an opportunity for scholars and 
practitioners to come together and systematically address the normative 
complexities of one of the major social and bio-medical challenges of the 21st 
century.
 
-
Angus Dawson,
Professor of Public Health Ethics,
Head of Medicine, Ethics, Society & History (MESH),
90, Vincent Drive,
School of Health & Population Sciences,
College of Medical and Dental Sciences,
University of Birmingham,
Edgbaston,
Birmingham,
B15 2TT.
UK.

Email: a.j.dawson@xxxxxxxxxx
Tel: +44 (0) 121 414 2957

Web: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/angus-dawson

Joint Editor-in-Chief of Public Health Ethics: http://phe.oxfordjournals.org/

Recent publication:  A. Dawson (ed.) Public Health Ethics: Key Concepts in 
Policy and Practice. Cambridge University Press.
See: www.cambridge.org/9780521689366
[interphen] Workshop on Ethics and Antimicrobial Resistance: Brocher, Switzerland 27th-28th March

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