SAN DIEGO -- For decades, dangerous infections have been held at bay by antibiotics.

But the 10News I-Team discovered bacteria-fighting drugs aren't the money-makers they used to be and that could have deadly consequences.

I-Team reporter Mitch Blacher uncovered who's choosing money over medicine.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America claims that over the last 25 years there has been a 75 percent decline in antibiotic production.

The society is petitioning Congress to give pharmaceutical makers incentives to make more.

The antibiotic used to save Bryce Smith's life was his last chance. His doctors said it was the only choice left on the shelf.

Now, at his Santee home, Bryce is full of life and love.

But shortly after Christmas Day, 2005, he was full of tubes and infection.

"First thing I thought was, `Okay, antibiotics. He's going to be fine’ but it didn't work out that way," recalled Bryce’s father, Scott Smith.

At 14 months old, Bryce had methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, his lungs had filled with fluid and his life was threatened.

At Rady Children's Hospital, doctors treated him with several antibiotics but nothing worked. Eventually, they induced a coma in preparation for more invasive treatment.

"My wife had never seen me cry in all the years we've been together, but when they took him behind that wall, I just broke down," Scott Smith remembered.

Bryce would recover, but more than 100 thousand patients in this country don't. The reason: "We have a public health crisis right now. We're running out of drugs," said Dr. Brad Spellberg.

Spellberg, of UCLA Medical Center, is an infectious disease expert. He says the pharmaceutical companies have stopped making enough antibiotics because it's not profitable.

"At the same time resistance is doing this. New antibiotics are doing this," Spellberg said.

Some of America’s premier health organizations agree.

A published report says in part, "the world may soon be faced with previously treatable diseases that have again become untreatable."

"If we don't turn this around, 10, 15, 20 years from now we're going to have an epidemic of pan resistant infections; infections resistant to everything. It's going to send medicine back seven decades," Spellberg said.

Experts say it costs an average of a billion dollars for a pharmaceutical company to market a new antibiotic. But consumers only use them for a short time. While drugs like Viagra cost the same to create, they earn more money because they can be taken more often and for longer periods of time.

"We need to take care of our communities and produce products that are for the better wealth of people's health, not what the designer drug of the week is," said Bryce’s mother, Katie Smith.

10News contacted PHRMA, an organization representing the pharmaceutical industry. Officials there issued a statement to the I-Team saying, "We can't discuss which therapies manufacturers are making or not making."

It’s a `money issue,’ the statement said. "That sort of thing falls under their business model, which is not something we are ‘in-the-know’ about."

But doctors who treat patients know what happens when their antibiotic arsenal becomes ineffective.

Simon Macario in Chicago and Rebecca Lohsen in New Jersey both died from untreatable infections.

In San Diego, Carlos Don, 12, died in the same hospital where Bryce Smith would later be saved.