I think if you have a disease that is curable with an antibiotic that gets really out of control you will find that government funding will become much more of a factor.<p>Been the government that threw a few billion bucks and saved thousands of (electorate) lives is a good vote winner.<p>The cost of developing antibiotics is large (in the billions) but US defence spending is 600bn dollars, UK defence spending is 60-odd bn dollars.<p>Governments should already be funding this stuff (imo) since the defence of the realm is theoretically their first goal.