Disease Resistance to Antibiotics Continues to Rise

creating suberbugs, just another exciting by-product of our*enlightened* moderne industrial,agricultural,petrochemical,pharmaceutical, biogenetic,human exploitive complex that still leaves the world hungry. crowd some more animals together, give 'em some more anti-biotics and lets make another dollar off their sick hide.
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original-cornucopia

Disease Resistance to Antibiotics Among Humans and Animals Continues to Rise

KANSAS CITY (Dow Jones)–Disease resistance to antibiotics among humans and animals continues to rise, despite declines in their use as a feed-ration additive to prevent illness and to promote growth in livestock and poultry, according to scientists and livestock industry members.

In addition, worldwide use of antibiotics to treat sick animals has increased in the last seven years, but total use remains below mid-1990s peaks, according to statistics for Europe by the Danish government.

The U.S. situation - declines in feed use to promote general herd or flock health and as a growth promoter - corresponds to an increase in therapeutic use to treat a higher numbers of sick animals or birds.

It “is precisely what is taking place in Europe,” said Ron Phillips, vice president of legislative and public affairs for the Animal Health Institute, citing figures from the Danish government’s program for surveillance of European antimicrobial resistance, called DANMAP.

Michael Hansen, senior scientist at the Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, pointed to the same report and said total antibiotic use in the European Union peaked in 1994. By the end of 1999, antibiotic use as a growth promoter was banned in the E.U., although the industry had begun to take
it out of the rations before then, he said.

The DANMAP report for 2005, the most recent statistics available, says, “antimicrobial consumption in food animals is still low compared to the total consumption before the cessation of growth promoter use.” A chart in the report also says antimicrobial use in animals leveled in 2004 and 2005.

At the same time, the use of antibiotics in humans has held about steady from 1997 through 2005, the DANMAP report showed.
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complete article here

:sarcasm:

Is the over prescription of antibiotics, especially for viral infections, like the Cold. The other big reason is that patients themselves don't follow the prescription instructions. When a drug is given to you for let's say a month, and you feel better after a week, do NOT stop taking that drug TILL the prescription runs out!

anti-biotics dwarfs human medical use. in CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operations) systems the antibiotics are given proactively in the feed because the living conditions of the animals standing in pools of shit and piss for weeks while they are baically force fed grain(not their natural diet) giving them intestinal disorders leaves them wide open for sny number of opportunistic infections. so wide spectrum antibiotics are a regular part of the diet and this does indeed encourage bacterial evolution to become resistant to the anti-biotics, the same anti biotics that would have been prescribed to us except now they're worthless thanks to the over usage by industrial ag.

I'm just targeting what may be more DIRECT causes for these "superbugs". Many are food born, in fact, most of our diseases can be attributed to other animals of one form or another. I also don't like unnecessary hormone therapies in animals, to increase a chicken's size, or to increase milk production, with unknown side effects in humans.

Unlike those, which require indirect actions, like voting in people who agree with you, one thing we CAN do directly to HELP ourselves is to STOP asking for anti-biotics from doctors, who themselves are increasingly saying NO to patients that ask for such drugs. Other things include following a doctor's instructions, to the LETTER, if necessary, when it comes to prescriptions, stuff like that.

Also, there is the "evolution" factor, anti-biotics are ALWAYS going to play catch up to diseases, because of the fact that we are using chemical means to defeat biological organisms. Organisms that measure generations in minutes and hours, rather than years and decades it takes to research drugs. One way to counteract this is to use OTHER biological systems to counteract disease bearing organisms.

"creating suberbugs, just another exciting by-product of our*enlightened* moderne industrial,agricultural,petrochemical,pharmaceutical, biogenetic,human exploitive complex that still leaves the world hungry."

:thumbsup:

The sad part being that we can't voluntarily stop.