Antibiotics Resistance: Is Excessive Use of Antibiotics Creating Super Bugs?
Tuesday November 18, 2008
Antibiotics are the miracle drugs of modern medicine--treating or curing countless diseases--but they are also helping to create a new generation of "super bugs" by strengthening the very bacteria they were designed to destroy. News stories about new bacteria strains such as MRSA, a type of staph infection that is resistant to most antibiotics, have raised new questions about antibiotics resistance and led to increased interest in how so-called "super bugs" develop and the public health dangers they pose.
Learn why antibiotics resistance is quickly becoming a major health issue and what can be done about it.
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Comments
Antibiotics are not teh cause of these resistant strains. The true cause is people who do not finish their antibiotic regimens. By not finishng the whole prescription we are leaving strains of the bateria to grow stronger and more resistant to the antibiotics.
Yes the overuse of antibiotics is definitely the reason we are getting these super bugs. Doctors are aware of this and are more careful about prescribing antibiotics. I also believe that our obsession with cleanliness is lowering our own resistance to germs. Our immune systems are weakened because we are being exposed to bacteria less
often and then when we do come face to face with a germ we have no resistance to it. If you immunize a dog against distemper any vet will tell you that if that dog has contact with other dogs and goes where other dogs have been his resistance will last longer. It is the same with us humans.
Well, I agree that people years back were probably more resistant.
Heck, nature thinned the herd by killing off the weaker of us, leaving only the tough to reproduce.
We were mostly agrarian years back, having less contact with crowds – but then, farm animals carry their own assortment of vermin that are transferable to humans.
I do think it is horrible that, instead of animals being raised in clean environments we cut corners by feeding them antibiotics.
Animal feed is probably the largest customer for antibiotics and it is these commercial uses that I believe may be doing the most damage.
I have tried several times to be a vegetarian, but each time I became ill with what appeared to be a cold, but could not shake it. Each time chicken seemed to result in a speedy recovery. Was is the old wive’s tale about chicken and colds; was it something about some esoteric nutrient in eating meat; or was it all the antibiotics residing in chickens as a result of what they are fed?