A public meeting that takes place tomorrow in Washington will launch the Obama White House’s ambitious attempt to be the administration that finally does something about antibiotic resistance. But as much as that appears to be good news, some advocates are concerned that the attempt comes with omissions that could mute the effort’s effectiveness down the line.

The event tomorrow will be the first public meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (CARB), a body of academic and private-sector experts that were appointed earlier this month. Their task is to guide the government’s new push to blunt resistance before it fatally undermines the effectiveness of antibiotics. The complaint is that in some areas, representation on the council is unbalanced in ways