Pick of the week’s correspondence

True cost of antibiotics To The Guardian

Contrary to your article (“The microbes are fighting back, and if anyone thinks there is a simple solution, they are wrong”), a few decades ago precisely no one in drug discovery thought that the war against infectious diseases had been won. Alexander Fleming, who first discovered antibiotics, warned of microbial resistance and it has been known about since.

The reason drug companies have shied away from antibiotic research is, as mentioned in the article, that it is extremely difficult to discover new ones. Unfortunately, a proposal to alter the way new drugs are rewarded will not change this. Every drug company knows that any new, effective antibiotic will be an instant “blockbuster”. The problem is that, even with the best minds in the world, most efforts at discovering new antibiotics will fail. Hopefully some will not, but there is no way to pick a winner until they have gone through the long, exacting, expensive process of clinical trials. We must therefore be willing to pay for research. The “winners” will pay for themselves many times over. But to find out which is the winner, we must pay for the “losers” too. Dr Dominic Pye, research chemist, London

Overselling statins To The Times

It may well be that a new study has shown a benefit to the elderly of taking statins no matter what their cardiovascular status. It is, however, not possible to “save 8,000 lives a year”, but only possible to delay the death of 8,000 patients each year, at best. Would I rather die of a heart attack or stroke in my active late 70s or 80s, or have my life prolonged in order to die of cancer or slowly suffer decrepitude in a care home when my other systems are no longer able to sustain an independent life? It is not a hard question for this septuagenarian.

This is not a matter of ageism by GPS: it is a demonstration of compassion

and common sense on their behalf. My GP knows that any talk of statins is pointless, I will never take them. The major beneficiary of this new research will be the pharmaceutical industry, not the individual. Dr John R. Pilling, FRCR, Arundel, West Sussex

Cancer and “positivity” To The Guardian

The language and imagery used by those talking about cancer can, as Simon Jenkins suggests, cause great distress to – and put pressure on – patients and their families. My husband died of a brain tumour. Some time later, a friend of his was diagnosed with a very treatable cancer. During his treatment he told me of his belief that being relentlessly positive was vital to his recovery. This was no doubt useful to his mental state, and I was delighted when he was successfully cured.

However, he later commented to me that he still couldn’t understand why my husband had died, given that he too “had always been so positive”. I answered pointedly that unlike his friend, he had not been lucky enough to develop a cancer that was currently curable, and left it at that; but at the time, and even now, years later, I find the implication that if he had only managed to be a bit more cheerful he’d have come through both ill-informed and deeply distressing. Jill Wallis, Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire

Thefts in the bag To The Daily Telegraph

You report that shoplifting in UK supermarkets rose by 8% from 2014 to 2017.

A related fact may be that the carrier bag charge was introduced in Scotland in 2014 and England in 2015. A clean new bag used to serve as a symbol that the customer had gone through a checkout and paid for the goods; now, shoplifters simply put stolen goods in the reusable bags they take into the store and put paid-for items on top, walking out with both. David Tyson, Nottingham

Cutting out cabinets To The Times

Your correspondence on the merits and failings of our prime ministers prompts a question. Previous incumbents had cabinet colleagues to support them and, where necessary, restrain them. Even the most forceful, Churchill and Thatcher, had to reckon with powerful cabinets, and Attlee was at most first among equals. But recent prime ministers, most flagrantly Blair and May, have simply ignored, bypassed or even deceived their cabinets, and their disastrous failures stem largely from this. What has happened? Professor Robert Tombs, University of Cambridge

MPS: liars or idiots? To The Daily Telegraph

We are told there is no majority in Parliament for a no-deal Brexit.

Presumably MPS, who voted by 498 to 114 in favour of invoking Article 50 with a default position of leaving the EU on 29 March 2019, with or without a deal, were either lying to us or too stupid to understand what they were voting for? Oliver Davies, Richmond, Greater London