The humans are losing ground
More on the looming problem of antibiotic resistance.
The golden age of antibiotics appears to be coming to an end, its demise hastened by a combination of medical, social and economic factors. For decades, these drugs made it easy for doctors to treat infections and injuries. Now, common ailments are regaining the power to kill.
Harvard University infectious disease epidemiologist William P. Hanage cautions that “we will not be flying back into the dark ages” overnight. Hospitals are improving their infection control, and public health experts are getting better at tracking new threats. But in a race against nature, he said, the humans are losing ground.
That’s a clumsy use of the word “cautions.” One doesn’t “caution” people that things aren’t all that terrible. He clarifies rather than cautions.
Until very recently, few made the connection between antibiotic use in individual cases and the emergence of antibiotic resistance, said Dr. Susan Bleasdale, an infection-control expert at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Patients with earaches, sinus pressure and sore throats demanded antibiotics, and physicians tended to oblige.
The results have been deadly. Each year, more than 2 million people in the U.S. are infected with a bacterium that has become resistant to one or more antibiotic medication designed to kill it, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 23,000 people die as a direct result of antibiotic-resistant infections, and many more die from other conditions that were complicated by an antibiotic-resistant infection, the agency says.
But it’s getting worse rather than better.
A survey released in June by the Infectious Diseases Society of America found that only 30% of Americans believe that antibiotic resistance is a significant problem for public health.
Which is probably why so many Americans still demand antibiotics for colds, and some doctors still give them.
The problem goes beyond treating infections. As bacterial resistance grows, Lesho said, “we’re all at risk of losing our access” to medical miracles we’ve come to take for granted: elective surgeries, joint replacements, organ transplants, cancer chemotherapies. These treatments give bacteria an opportunity to hitch a ride on a catheter or an unwashed hand and invade an already vulnerable patient.
We grew up taking powerful medical technologies for granted. It won’t be pleasant watching them weaken and fade away.
I wonder to what degree laissez-faire/libertarian ideology is implicated in this. Antibiotic research is not profitable, so this is one area where The Free Market inarguably can’t “do it better.”
Yes, the article talks about that. Meds you have to use forever are profitable, antibiotics are not. Soooooooo………
“to what degree laissez-faire/libertarian ideology is implicated” Lady Mondegreen #1
Also subtherapeutic use of antibiotics to promote growth and improve feed efficiency in intensive animal farming:
http://nfu.org/nfu-2015-policy
http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/36298-the-rural-sacrifice-to-capitalism-and-christianity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock
inter alia
Of course, most hand soaps are antibacterial now. You have to really work at it to find soap that isn’t antibacterial. My students tell me that they will only use antibacterial soap because it keeps them well; I explain otherwise. We talk about it, they appear to understand. Then on the test they write down what they always thought, because mass media has their attention more hours a day than I do.
iknklast, yes. Indeed. Use of antibiotics to make livestock gain weight is actually the single biggest source of resistant bacteria, as far as I remember, could be wrong. It certainly seems like the simplest thing to just stop doing. Preferably overnight. Stop that, and the inappropriate prescribing, and the antibacterial everything, and in a while the bacteria will have lost their resistance. (Why am I hearing a huge echoing voice saying “Good Luck With That” ?)
Ditto #3 and #4.
There is no doubt that antibiotics have been a wonderful natural gift that has been largely squandered, and by people who should have bloody well known better (and you didn’t have to be Charles Darwin to work that out.)
But what I find interesting is the fact that organisms like the fungi of the genus Penicillium have had these powerful antibiotics in their arsenals presumably for billions of years and have been using them to engage in chemical warfare against the ubiquitous bacteria for all that time and from the instant they were first bio-synthesised, without those antibiotics suffering loss of potency through ‘overuse’.
http://www.phadia.com/en/Products/Allergy-testing-products/ImmunoCAP-Allergen-Information/Molds-and-other-Microorganisms/Allergens/Penicillium-chrysogenum/
@4
Yes, exactly. That and growth hormones are really big problems.
As #3 pointed out, the people wanting antibiotics for their sore throat are pretty minor compared to how antibiotics are used in intensive farming. Add to this that they’re just dumped in the environment (e.g. here: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090204/full/457640a.html but I can’t help but wonder what it looks like in more “developed” places too), and it’s perfect