Former Goldman Sachs Executive On Problem That Can Cost The World $100 Trillion By 2050

Shares of Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals Inc TTPH rose heavily Thursday, as the company announced that its antibiotic, Eravacycline, proved to be successful in a late-stage study. Eravacycline is meant to treat infections caused by gram-negative bacteria, a type of antibiotic-resistant pathogens mostly knows as superbugs.

Economist Jim O'Neill, former chairman of the asset management arm of Goldman Sachs Group, was recently on CNBC to discuss why this superbug can turn into a potential $100 trillion problem for the world by 2015.

"I have been working independently, but at the request of the British prime minister to try and estimate what the costs to the world as a whole will be both economically and otherwise of failing to deal with anti-microbial resistance, which includes superbugs, but unfortunately if we don’t find a solution, it’s going to affect a lot of infectious diseases around the world, particularly for some of my friends in the BRIC countries and Africa," O’Neill said

He continued, "so, what I am tasked with is to not only highlight the problem, which we have done in this initial report. I think it is the first global estimate on such an issue that has ever been undertaken and is very complex to do, but after this now we have to more importantly come up with some ideas about trying to recommend solutions about the dependency on the, especially antibiotics, but also to try and come up with reasons and ideas to stimulate the production of new antibiotics. So big challenge, but a very important one."