assignment 16: speech Elana Ehl

As far as the general populous is concerned, antibiotics have single handedly brought medicine into a new age. Some consider this to be the golden age of medicine itself, where diseases can simply be cured with a pill or two. These miracle pills are what we know as antibiotics. But what many people don’t realize is that antibiotics are in objects we use everyday, ranging from the food we eat to the products we clean our houses with. All it took for humanity to enter this “golden age of medicine” was for a simple researcher, Alexander Fleming, to accidentally leave his lab window open.

Antibiotics are medicines that inhibit the growth, and even destroy, microorganisms and “most antibiotics are derived from natural organisms like fungi, which use… compounds as weapons against bacteria”(Herrmann). By taking the chemical that make those molds able to fight bacteria, scientists are able to synthesize these chemicals into compounds that are safe for human use.

Antibiotics were first used during the Second World War to prevent the death of soldiers due to disease (Resistance). Disease killed more soldiers than injuries in battle did, so when penicillin was introduced for use in the military it instantly became a wonder drug. Unfortunately because everyone saw the supposed miracles it could work for a sick soldier, it quickly became overused by the public. Soon it was being used to prevent diseases instead of just simply treating diseases. This overuse quickly spread throughout the medical field and eventually worked its way into agricultural practices around the world.

When you go to the doctor feeling sick more often than not you walk out with a prescription of antibiotics to help you feel better. What would you do if I told you that the doctor most likely only gave you the medicine because they were not sure what you had? because that is the truth. Doctors often can’t tell the difference between certain bacterial infections and viruses because they exhibit similar symptoms and the only way to officially tell is a lab test that may take a long time for the results to come back. These physicians would rather give an unneeded prescription than get the diagnosis wrong (Resistance). Now many of you here may be wondering what a doctor covering all the medical bases has to do with bacterial resistance to antibiotics, but it is because of this over exposure our community has to the antibiotics that antibiotic resistant microorganisms are becoming alarmingly common. An antibiotic is essentially just a poison to bacteria, so when an antibiotic is introduced into an environment it starts to kill bacteria it comes in contact with. The bacteria that live through the attack by the antibiotic is stronger and now resistant to the antibiotic that was used. Because bacteria replicate 500,000 times faster than humans the Darwinian effect of natural selection sets in and the new antibiotic resistant strain spreads from organism to organism (Resistance). These superbugs often affect the people with the weakest immune systems which more often than not is children.

“Acute otitis media is the most commonly identified bacterial infection in children, and the majority of young children have several ear infections diagnosed before the age of 7 years. This infection alone is the most common reason for antibiotic prescribing in children”(Larson).

This over prescription of drugs is greatly affecting the children of today who need to live to be the adults of tomorrow.

The overprescription of drugs is just the tip of the iceberg of problems contributing to the cause of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. The fact that antibiotic agents are in almost every single household product, from cleaning supplies to even clothing, only contributes to the problem. To give you an idea of the wide range of products containing antibiotics: towels, underwear, socks, scissors, ice cream scoops, mops, deodorant, lip gloss, grout, meat slicers, toothbrushes, calculators, lotion, wallpaper, handrails, yoga mats, vacuum cleaners, baby carriers, coolers, helmets, plastics, pet feeders and many more. With antibiotics in so many products killing weak microorganisms and letting the strong resistant ones live it is no wonder that antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria have become such a problem. Due to all the antibiotics used in household cleaners, cleaning has started to become an ineffective way to kill microorganisms. This is where the problem of hospitals being unclean stems from. If antibiotic cleaners are used widely by the general public then the antibiotic resistant bacteria will thrive in houses, when the people from the house go to the hospital they will transfer the antibiotic resistant microorganisms into the hospital, the hospital will have a hard time cleaning them because the bacteria cannot be killed by normal cleaning products.

It does not help the fight against the superbugs that health care field is fighting if pharmaceutical companies are not willing to put money into developing the next antibiotic. Pharmaceutical companies are all about making a profit and they are not willing to sign the typical pharmaceutical contract of $10 billion in research for 10 years to find the next drug if they can only sell if for a few years before it won’t be used much (Resistance). Even if the drug was a bestseller it would lose effectiveness before it could make a difference because it would be overused, only contributing to the problem of superbugs. The pharmaceutical companies have more profit in finding the next great blood pressure medicine because it could turn a larger profit and it would never lose demand (Resistance).

It's not only the overuse in the medical field that directly affects our community when it comes to antibiotic resistant microorganisms. The use of antibiotics when raising animals for meat is also a major contributor to the issue. Animals are often given antibiotics as a growth promoter so that more animals can be raised faster and in larger populations, and the antibiotics also work to keep the animals healthier so that they can be kept in deplorable conditions (Resistance). 90% of antibiotics given to animals are solely intended to make them grow at a faster rate (Resistance). Giving animals antibiotics everyday has the same effect as feeding a child antibiotics instead of vitamins every morning. The child will eventually take enough that it kills all the weak bacteria off and possibly leaves room for a super bug to form. A sample from a tube of ground turkey was taken by the FDA and testes, and when the result came back it showed that there was a strain of salmonella that was resistant to eight of the most effective antibiotics (Resistance). This resulted due to the overuse of antibiotics but the Department of Agriculture does not see it that way.

The fate of antibiotics in agriculture has become a political issue with lobbyist on both sides but greatly unbalanced by corporate lobbyists. From 1982 to 2007 82% of all hog farms went out of business but the amount of hogs produced increase (Resistance). This is because large corporations took over the business of hog farming and because large corporations focus mainly on profit they used antibiotics to ensure the health and growth of their livestock so they could turn a profit. Majority of the agriculture industry sees the use of antibiotics as irreversible because it would be a big financial drain to stop, or even slow down, because the use of antibiotics is so ingrained in the industry.

It is not just America that faces these issues on such a large scale. India, with a population of almost 2 billion, likely has far more problems regarding the spread of superbugs. In India, antibiotics are available over the counter without a prescription leading to an overuse on a much larger scale than the United States (The Rise of Superbugs). Antibiotics have been used to the point that they have infected both the soil and water. The deadliest superbug known to medicine, the New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (also known as Indian One) lives in these polluted Indian waters. It releases a gene that attaches to healthy cells of the host and proceeds to cause the cells to attack each other and the only drug that help kill the bacteria has been deemed dangerous for use in humans (The Rise of Superbugs). Unlike in the U.S., Indian physicians are unable to change anything because if they bring up the issue they are shunned by their peers and the country because of the massive negative effects it would have on the tourism industry. Americans need to take action to not just help America but follow the example that has been set by Europe when it comes to limiting the use of antibiotics.

Works Cited

Herrmann, Markus, and Ramanan Laxminarayan. "Antibiotic Effectiveness: New Challenges in Natural Resource Management." Annu. Rev. Resour. Econ. Annual Review of Resource Economics 2.1 (2010): 125-38. Web. 30 June 2015.

Larson, Elaine. "Community Factors in the Development of Antibiotic Resistance." Annu. Rev. Public. Health. Annual Review of Public Health 28.1 (2007): 435-47. Web. 30 June 2015.

Resistance. Dir. Michael Graziano. Netflix, 2014. Online Documentary.

The Rise Of Superbugs. Prod. ABC Australia. Journeyman Pictures, 2012. Online Documentary.