Norm = threshold?

A highly accurate explanation is required.
Thanks in anticipation.


Context:
Faced with these daunting therapeutic challenges, physicians in some countries have had to resort to antibiotics with unfavourable toxicity profiles and imited pharmacodynamic guidance (eg, colistin) 16, as well as unconventional combinations of antibiotics that have not been investigated properly. Old ideas are being resurrected, such as the use of lytic bacteriophages, but with little evidence of clinical effectiveness. New approaches, such as defensins, targeted monoclonal antibodies, and agents designed to interrupt mechanisms of pathogenesis (eg, toll-like receptors, quorum sensing) have yet to fulfill their therapeutic potential.

Essentially, even as we are forced to revisit treatments that are more than 30 years old while waiting desperately for new research to bear fruit, we sense a pervasive belief in the scientific community that increasing resistance is the new norm. This is a misleading and costly attitude, both in human and economic terms.

The complete context (legal link for open source):

http://thelancet.cn/dnn1201/lancetcncampaignarticle.pdf