Is there a risk that cycles of discovering new antibiotics and resistance emerging to these new antibiotics, eventually leads to us “running out” of therapeutic targets, causing AMR to pose an x-risk?
From my understanding, bacteria are very unlikely to cause a pandemic, mainly because we have many effective broad-spectrum antibiotics. If we no longer have these, we’re susceptible to bioengineered pandemics from bacteria.
I am planning to write a shorter, more speculative examination of AMR as a GCBR/X-risk in the coming weeks :) I will try and address this there, thanks for the great question
Is there a risk that cycles of discovering new antibiotics and resistance emerging to these new antibiotics, eventually leads to us “running out” of therapeutic targets, causing AMR to pose an x-risk?
Depending on the threshold, I see that this could qualify as a global catastrophic risk, but how could it constitute an existential risk?
From my understanding, bacteria are very unlikely to cause a pandemic, mainly because we have many effective broad-spectrum antibiotics. If we no longer have these, we’re susceptible to bioengineered pandemics from bacteria.
Discovering new antibiotics takes a long time and requires huge investment. That is why the interest in phage therapy is growing.
I am planning to write a shorter, more speculative examination of AMR as a GCBR/X-risk in the coming weeks :) I will try and address this there, thanks for the great question