Nicholas Weaver To the Editor / SF Chronicle 30dec00
Editor -- Re: Superbugs and agriculture ("Superbugs Threaten Our Health," Dec. 29). Another major factor in the rise of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms is the subclinical treatment of animals.
Low doses of antibiotics make animals grow faster, and this has long been used within the agribusiness industries. Yet this is the perfect ground to breed antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria; low dosages over a long period of time are more likely to produce antibiotic-resistant strains.
This is made even worse by the ability of some bacteria to convey plasmid- based resistance information to other species.
Two major steps must be taken:
1) Ban subclinical treatment of animals. Antibiotics can be used to treat animal infections, but they should not be given under continuous low doses to increase animal growth rates. Otherwise, one simply creates antibiotic- resistant strains of salmonella, E. coli, Listeria and other food-borne bacterial pathogens.
2) Reserve all new antibiotics for humans only; ban them from veterinary use entirely.
Berkeley CA
SF Chronicle 29dec00
HAILED AS THE wonder drugs of the second half of the 20th century, antibiotics saved thousands of Baby Boomers from infectious diseases that had killed people in earlier generations.
But gradually, too many patients demanded antibiotics for viral infections, against which they don't work, and too many doctors caved into demands for a magic bullet.
The result? Superbugs that are resistant to multiple antibiotics.
Bacteria are clever little critters. When assaulted too often by one antibiotic, survival of the fittest occurs. A few manage to withstand treatment and multiply, and when this process is repeated enough times with new drugs, bacteria eventually turn into drug-resistant superbugs.
For more than a decade, public-health workers have battled drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis. Now comes the ominous news that doctors have long feared -- the rapid rise of drug-resistant infections in the United States. According to three new studies, these include pneumonia, meningitis, food poisoning and infections of the ear and the bloodstream.
To avert a health crisis, patients and doctors need to act with restraint. Antibiotics are truly miracle drugs. Use them sparingly.
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