Updates Continued (Antibiotics)

Updates Continued (Antibiotics)

   One final note from the last posting (since some additional paragraphs were added the next day to the posting), the new climate talks and pledges will be held in Paris this coming December.  In addition, Alan Rusbridger, the retiring editor of English newspaper, The Guardian, announced that he had few regrets of his time there, save one...not putting climate change on the front pages.  His article is an interesting piece and worth reading.

   Okay onward to that (can be) deadly subject of antibiotics and what changes have arrived in that world since I last wrote about it.  Antibiotics have been in the news a lot recently, what with the measles outbreak, Ebola, the flu, anti-bacterial soap and...wait a minute, it's getting pretty confusing because aren't some of those actually viruses and thus not affected by antibiotics, which work only on bacterial infections?  And isn't some of our bacteria actually good for us and in fact quite necessary?  And aren't those yogurt cups pushing good probiotic bacteria onto and into us actually so insignificant that it's more of a marketing push?  And...okay, enough.  The answer to those questions is that they're all pretty much true, but there's much more to it than that.

   In a TED talk featuring Rob Knight, the discussion became microbes and if you want to get technical and dazzled, then this is a good place to start. Why?  Because you've likely heard of C.diff (Clostridium difficile) a condition thought to be possibly caused by having too many antibiotics and thus letting this bacterial infection into your body.  And there's a continuing urgency to back off from our anti-bacterial products such as soaps and cleaners which work on killing all bacteria and are thought to be part of the problem in the creation of "superbugs" such as Staphylocuccus aureus which is proving resistant to our strongest antibiotics (leading to an estimated 23,000 deaths and over 2 million illnesses);  similar superbugs are appearing in tuberculosis (which killed an estimated 170,000 people) and salmonella, those being just 3 of the 17 such resistant microorganisms already discovered.

   And the problem isn't just our soaps and such for 80% of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are given to poultry and livestock (in one surprising development, the fast food chain McDonald's announced it is getting in line with Chipotle by not accepting any chicken meat raised with antibiotics...but that will apply only in the U.S. and in a process that will be phased in over the next 2 years; and as you read, it will apply only to its chicken meat and not to its beef).  What's more shocking is that 93% of the antibiotics given to the pigs, chicken and beef we raise for our consumption, are NOT reviewed by the Food & Drug Administration.  In a brief graph in the recent National Geographic, it showed "53% of grocery store chicken sampled in a 2013 study had resistant E. coli."  But large U.S. firms such as Perdue (which slaughters and processes 12 million chickens each week, which is still about 65% less than the major producers) have discovered that reducing or eliminating antibiotics for weight gain are resulting in their chickens getting fewer diseases (chicken and its frightening statistics, will appear in a future post).

   Part of the problem is the overuse in prescribed antibiotics.  Got a sore throat?  One study from Harvard showed that 50% of the antibiotics prescribed for that condition were unnecessary.  And with bronchitis, that number (unnecessary prescriptions) jumped to 75%.  And this isn't limited to the doctors, for often we, as patients, almost demand to have antibiotics.  The key thing is to remember that antibiotics work only on bacteria and not viruses...and antibiotics, especially the broad-spectrum antibiotics, will knock out bacteria willy nilly, good, bad, indifferent, they'll all be killed or compromised, and can often return with an even stronger mutation.

   Okay, it's a lot to take in and before your eyes get bleary, I'll let you rest until the next post where I'll attempt to give you a brief rundown of the differences and the alternatives now appearing.  It's a complicated and diverse subject, and again, this is not meant to be a medical sheet or an effort to give you advice by any means; rather this is meant to be a light summary of future areas for you to verify and explore, if interested.  And as you read, antibiotics are everywhere...they're not all bad by any means, but our overuse of them is likely changing the direction we intended.