ANTIBIOTICS

• Antibiotic Resistance
  Threatens Public Health
  
  
• Doctors depend on antibiotics
  to treat disease caused by bacteria.
  
  
• Antibiotics have absolutely no effect on viruses.
  
  
• Antibiotics have been overused
  virtually since they were discovered.

Patients, and especially the parents of child patients, often ask for antibiotics to treat infections that are caused by viruses or that may be bacterial but will be taken care of by the body's immune system, given a little patience. More so in the past, doctors would often go ahead and prescribe an antibiotic to keep the patient happy and on the grounds that the prescription would "do no harm". Harm has been done. Bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics. Now we face bacterial infections that are very hard to control, while drug companies search for new antibiotics. People are dying because of our history of antibiotic misuse.

Children will fight off most childhood illnesses without antibiotics. Doing so helps to develop and strengthen their immune systems. You're doing your child a favour by asking your doctor to "please avoid prescribing an antibiotic unless absolutely necessary". A child is typically going to have a half-dozen common colds every year, often with a runny nose that shows yellow or green matter. Let the immune system tough it out unless your doctor feels there's a threat of serious secondary infection. The immune system will beat the common cold in about one week. With antibiotics, it takes about seven days.

Doctors should have resisted the pressure to prescribe antibiotics inappropriately. If only they had known what would happen...hindsight, etc.

Just as culpable are patients with actual bacterial infections, who would often quit taking the prescribed antibiotic when symptoms disappeared, leaving a bottle still half full of pills. They'd get better, as almost all the bacteria would be killed...but a few of the toughest bacteria would survive. The next time those bacteria found themselves in a position to infect and reproduce, they reproduced nothing but more bacteria that the original prescription didn't quite kill off. Now there's a population of resistant bacteria...a doctor will try the tried-and-true antibiotic, find it won't work, and prescribe something stronger. The same sequence of events happens, and now you've got a bacteria that's resistant to two different antibiotics. Next year, a plague wipes out the human race. Except for a few humans who are resistant. They reproduce like rabbits and...Now we're getting carried away, but the point is...

Antibiotic Overuse and Misuse Threatens Public Health

Here's what the World Health Organization says:

Recently, the effectiveness of many antibiotics has begun to wane, the legacy of decades of unnecessary overuse in both human medicine and agriculture.

World Health Organization Issues Warning About Antibiotic Overuse
The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a warning June 12, 2000 that the present use of antibiotics is creating a dangerous situation by increasing drug resistant infections. According to the report, which was picked up by the Associated Press and most other news agencies, "drug-resistant infections in rich and developing nations alike are threatening to make once-treatable diseases incurable."

Dr. David Heymann, WHO infectious diseases chief, stated in the article, "We are losing windows of opportunity. It is something we have to really address immediately or we are going to start losing our antibiotics." Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who helped the WHO unveil the report also added, "This is a major problem for us, and it is not going to go away."

The problem is that we are using antibiotics so regularly that the bacteria we are fighting are now evolving to be resistant and stronger. At the same time when we continually use antibiotics instead of our own natural resistance we are becoming weaker, as a species, in our ability to fight these bacteria.

The World Health Organization also pointed out that how we raise animals is also a large part of the problem. The WHO noted that half the antibiotics used world-wide are used on the farm, mostly to help healthy animals grow bigger. That encourages drug-resistant bacteria that cause food poisoning.

The WHO makes two basic recommendations. The first is wiser use of antibiotic and antimicrobial drugs. The second is that human antibiotics not be used to enhance the growth of animals meant for human consumption.

News Item: March 16, 2004: Administrative Law Judge Daniel J. Davidson released his decision upholding the proposed United States FDA ban on Cipro-like drugs in poultry. Bayer has appealed that decision, which could add years to the process.

You remember Cipro? The antibiotic of choice to fight anthrax? Would you prefer plumper chickens grown faster, or a cure for a terrorist bioweapon? Do you find four rhetorical question sentences in a row to be annoying? Why? Anyway, please remember to take the full course of an antibiotic when your doctor prescribes it. Don't quit just because you're feeling better.
Stay the course.
Kill 'em all!

And don't forget to feed your immune system...