&gt; <i>This is why all the major pharmaceutical companies have shut down their antibiotic divisions.</i><p>No, but the other side of it is that for the money that they <i>had</i> invested, before shutting it down, they got very little at all. That is the other explanation here — that they invested money into antibiotics research and simply couldn&#x27;t make it work. E.g., <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.sciencemag.org&#x2F;pipeline&#x2F;?s=antibiotics" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.sciencemag.org&#x2F;pipeline&#x2F;?s=antibiotics</a>