Widespread antibiotic overuse and misuse have created strains of drug-resistant Staphylococcus bacteria that are moving beyond the confines of the hospitals where they’re thought to have originated. The New York Times reports:
… A virulent strain of bacteria that resists many antibiotics appears to be killing more people annually than AIDS, emphysema or homicide, taking an estimated 19,000 lives in 2005, according toa study published last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
… Without question, people need to show far more respect for antibiotics. Misuse of antibiotics allows bacteria to evolve and develop resistance to drugs. But parents often pressure pediatricians to prescribe antibiotics even when they don’t help the vast majority of childhood infections. When you do take an antibiotic, finish the dose. Antibiotic resistance is bad for everyone, but your body can also become particularly vulnerable to resistant bacteria if you are careless with the drugs. …
You know who else is careless with antibiotics, though? The livestock industry. Specifically, factory farms. Why? Because they keep their animals in such cramped areas, which are usually also filthy, and feed them things their bodies weren’t meant to tolerate. Without antibiotics, these animals would just keel over and die. Maybe you’re wondering how much antibiotic they could really be using?
Seventy percent of all antimicrobials used in the United States are fed to livestock. This accounts for 25 million pounds of antibiotics annually, more than 8 times the amount used to treat disease in humans.
That much. A lot. And does it show up in the meat and milk these animals produce? Damn skippy. John Kirk, DVM at UC Davis, gives a few reasons why this might occur:
– Not following label directions for correct treatment
– Not following the label directions for the appropriate withdrawal period
– Treatment not recorded as a written record—shipped the cow too soon
– Poor animal identification
Dr. Kirk speaks from the assumption that, of course, these antibiotics are being given to animals for specific conditions. But on many factory farms, antibiotics are routine, bulk feed ingredients, even though animals so treated aren’t supposed to enter the foodstream until the drugs are out of their systems. It’s just that there are these regrettable, common mistakes, you see, stemming from the fact that animals are meant to live out in the open and eat what their predecessors ate so that their immune systems are healthy enough to keep them alive on their own.
What all this means is that you can’t know, when you drink the milk or eat the meat of an animal that’s been raised in factory farm conditions, if you’re getting a low dose of antibiotics. An antibiotic that you won’t be taking a full course of, that will then give bacteria in your body a chance to develop immunity to it. Any animal whose milk or meat isn’t specifically labeled antibiotic-free poses this risk.
But there’s more….
Animals raised with antibiotics, and under the conditions that require their use, themselves develop resistant microorganisms that spread to humans. This explains how e coli, a generally harmless and ubiquitous bacteria, mutated into a deadly form.
Food has become a crucial issue in terms of health, economics, environment, and the future of democratic society. By far the best book I’ve seen on the subject is Michael Pollan’s The Ominivores’ Dilemma. The author follows basic ag commodities through the food chain from planting to their ending up in four different meals. The book is shocking without polemics and at the same time manages to be a page-turner and funny. Highly recommended for anyone inspired by Natasha’s article to go deeper into the complexities of food, agriculture, and economics.
antibiotics to avoid the super bugs. Whooping cough is making a come back because doctors don’t prescribe antibiotics just in case anymore. Most doctors don’t know to watch for whooping cough, so you can have it for months without knowing.
As we all did here at Chez Cabin this past winter. And you’re absolutely right, the doctors don’t recognize it even after you have the full blown disease; I went to my pulmonologist early on, and they totally missed what I had.
Been going on a long time, too. I grew up on a hog farm and 25-30 years ago my father would make sure the feed given included antibiotics, especially before being shipped out to the slaughterhouses.
My son had a large pressure sore with MRSA infection through the bone. The first surgeon dropped him on the excuse that (at 104 degrees) he was “uncooperative.” The real reason: The surgeon knew that both he and his HMO employer were seriously liable.
Two years, six antibiotics, garlic, sugar/iodine paste, daily nursing…it’s gone. We’ve been told that what we accomplished was impossible per the textbooks. Tens of thousands of Americans are not so lucky.
There are a lot of reasons for this. In my son’s case, he got it in a horrendously under-staffed emergency ward that was filled with illegal immigrants and uninsured. (The place would not have been so crowded if we had early preventative medicine.)
But you are absolutely right about the way we are helping evolution along. Of course, Republicans don’t believe in evolution so they don’t need to believe in evolution.
Just found out yesterday that my daughter’s cheerleading coach and one other teacher at her school have aquired some sort of resistant staph related rash and are recieving treatment while all practice has been indefinetily postponed. I don’t know how related or not that this is, but I’ve also read on another site this morning that there’s a similar drug resistant staph infection that is coming here from Iraq war American battlefield hospitals.
Freaky stuff.
Germs evolving? No way! Everyone knows that evolution is only a theory.
Here’s an idea, for those infected with MRSA, fundies get sulfa drugs and rational people who belive in facts and science get vancomycin.
You know who else is careless with antibiotics, though? The livestock industry. Specifically, factory farms. Why? Because they keep their animals in such cramped areas, which are usually also filthy, and feed them things their bodies weren’t meant to tolerate. Without antibiotics, these animals would just keel over and die
Much more fun to blame the whining parents of sick children, though.
Handwriting on the wall: Health care in the US of any kind is in its last days.