The TV news has been running pieces about the rise of drug resistant diseases. The bacteria evolve resistance to what ever it is in antibiotics that kills them. Survival of the fittest. The narrators on TV, often guys in white coats, blame over use of antibiotics by doctors. Antibiotics only work against bacteria, they do nothing against virii. When parents bring children in to the doc, with earaches, or the flu, or all those childhood problems, the doc often proscribes an antibiotic on general principles. The kids get well and every one is happy.
We raised three children, and when they were small, we had a bottle of that pink amoxillin stuff in the fridge pretty much all winter. Some times for one child, sometimes for another child, sometimes for all three at once. I dare say things are much the same in most households.
Although doctors ought to back off on antibiotic use, we ought to bear down on the farmers. They feed antibiotics to livestock pretty much every day. It's not that the stock is sick, it's that they grow faster and put on more weight when fed antibiotics. That may be, but the practice breeds up an army of drug resistance bacteria. The light dose of antibiotic kills the weaker bacteria, leaving the more resistant bacteria alive to breed. Animal diseases can infect people. Smallpox, swine flu, bird flu are three that come to mind. There has got to be others.
So, before we get too fierce about doctors proscribing too many antibiotics for small children, we ought to get fierce about feeding antibiotics to livestock.
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