In a recent report published in Lancet Infectious Diseases, scientists discovered colistin-resistant E coli in 21 percent of slaughtered pigs in China. They found isolates in 15 percent of meat sold from those animals in retail sites. They even detected resistant E coli in more than 1 percent of hospitalized patients.

Most horrifying, it appears that the resistance is transmitted by plasmids. That means the bacteria don’t just pass on resistance to their “children”; they can pass it among one another and to completely different strains of bacteria. Scientists were also able to detect colistin resistance from the same gene in Klebsiella pneumonia in hospitalized patients. The accompanying editorial to the colistin report called this “a major breach in our last line of defense.”

While the concern is reaching a fever pitch, it’s important to remember that resistance isn’t new. We can’t blame all of our problems on antibiotic overuse and misuse. Even the proper use of antibiotics will eventually lead to resistance.

Our response to these setbacks has been to create new types of drugs. Penicillin-resistant staphylococcus were already being seen in labs in 1940, a few years before mass-produced penicillin was introduced. Tetracycline was introduced in 1950, and resistant shigella were identified in the same decade. Erythromycin’s introduction in 1953 was followed by resistant streptococcus in 1968. Gentamicin, developed in 1967, saw resistance in 1979; Vancomycin, developed in 1972, saw resistance in 1988; and Imipenem, released in 1985, saw resistance in 1998.

It’s also in this game of catch-up that we are failing. Fifteen of the 18 largest pharmaceutical companies have abandoned the antibiotic market entirely. Research funding in all areas of academia has been cut back significantly as well. While 19 new antibiotics were approved by the F.D.A. from 1980 to 1984, only 13 were approved from 2000-2014. We aren’t keeping pace with resistance.

While we can quibble about the exact cost of bringing a new drug to market, we can all agree that it’s a lot of money. Drugs in the United States are profitable when they are sold in great volume or when they are very expensive. Antibiotics, as a class of drug, provide a poor return on investment for pharmaceutical companies. They face low-priced and generic competition. Any breakthrough drug will almost certainly be held in reserve for only the most resistant cases, meaning there’s not a huge immediate market for it, when a company still has exclusivity.

Many people have proposed new ways to incentivize and reward innovation. The Group of 7 is poised to coordinate action, as is the Group of 20 and the World Health Organization. In Davos, Switzerland, nearly the entire drug industry agreed. It released a statement in January calling for big changes in how we pay for antibiotic research and development, including the idea of “delinkage” or paying for value as opposed to volume of antibiotics sold.