Both my grandmother in Wisconsin and grandmother-in-law in Florida, have been in and out of the hospital with multidrug resistant infections that are impervious to treatment with numerous antibiotics. Doctors and scientists don’t know yet how to kill these bacteria. We cannot rely on private industry to discover new treatments for these alarming infections — finding new treatments will require publicly-funded research.

Multidrug resistant infections are common and are on the rise. Each year in the USA, an estimated 2.8 million people contract a multidrug resistant infection, and 35,000 die each year.

Scarily, the potential to develop new effective antibiotics seems farther and farther out of reach these days. Why are our prospects for antibiotic discovery dimming right now? Unlike drugs for chronic illnesses that must be taken for years, a lifesaving antibiotic may be needed for only a few days.

The short timecourse means that there are few big pharmaceutical company payouts waiting for the discovery of the next effective antibiotic. We, as a society, cannot rely on the private sector to develop the next antibiotic. Instead, we need publicly funded research to look for those next breakthroughs.

Indeed, many of the most important antibiotics were discovered not by pharmaceutical companies but by academic scientists.

Penicillin, the first antibiotic and one frequently used today to treat strep throat was discovered accidentally by the microbiologist doctor Alexander Flemming when he noticed a fungus that could suppress his bacterial cultures. Chloramphenicol, a first-line of defense for meningitis and typhus, was similarly discovered in academic research. Amoxicillin, what my daughter took when she teetered on the edge of pneumonia, was developed by Beechman research laboratories based on findings in publicly-funded academic research.

Funding for the research at universities that has given us so many antibiotics is in trouble. The current administration is working to reduce the budget for academic research by more than 50%. Over 2,000 research labs have lost their funding in the past three months.

This reduction is not only bad for antibiotic discovery, but also for the finances of our country. It is estimated that every federal dollar allocated to research gives a return of $3-$5 in cash flow to our State and Federal coffers as a result of innovation. When we reduce funding to public research, when we take away research grants, we are also hurting our country’s economy.

I don’t understand why we would do this to ourselves.

My grandmothers are healthy right now, infection-free. But the multidrug resistant bacteria are not done, and they continue to evolve to evade our current treatments. When the next generation gets sick with strep or pneumonia or post-surgery infections, will we have the ability to treat them?

For the sake of my grandmothers, for the sake of my daughters and for the sake of our country, I hope we as a society can come together to support publicly-funded scientific research.

Talia Karasov is an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Utah.