EDITORIALS AUIC- THE UNIVERSAL PARAMETER WITmN THE CONSTRAINT OF A REASONABLE DOSING INTERVAL

dosing has alternated between unmanaged chaos and de-spair over its total irrationality. Two camps have emerged and drawn lines in the sand, as we all undertake that grand experiment called managed care. l.2 On one hand, there are advocates of the one-dose-for-a11 strategy. These scholars are typically reinforced by the marketing efforts of some pharmaceutical companies that encourage simplicity in dosing to gain a marketing advantage. These efforts bring us such rational dosing strategies as once-daily administra-tion of antibiotics with a 2-hour half-life. It should be acknowledged that many clinical trials are not designed to challenge the new antibiotic to the point where it may fail. Clearly, even the most poorly designed antibi-otic dosing strategies work in the forgiving environment of a patient who is not very ill and/or is culture-negative.3 Lack of rigor in evaluation of these studies persists to the point where the uninvolved believe dosing matters so little that the accompanying article4 argues in favor of once-daily dosing of an agent (cefmenoxime) with a half-life of 1 hour. The other side of this dosing fence is populated by a handful of vigorous advocates of individualization, the one-dose-for-each antibiotic dosing strategy.SolO While these clinicians and researchers may vigorously argue the rela