The more we use antibiotics, the less effective they become.
Can antibiotic
medicines, long hailed as miracle drugs, be too much of a good thing? Yes.
Two factors are at
work here. First, bacteria (one of the earliest forms of life on Earth) are
miracles in their own right, with a stunning ability to outsmart the antibiotic
drugs through rapid evolution.
Second is the rather
dull inclination of us supposedly superior humans to overuse and misuse antibiotic
drugs.
Sometimes, when we take an antibiotic to kill some bad bacteria that’s
infecting our bodies, a few of the infectious germs are naturally resistant to
the drug. They can survive, multiply, and become a colony of Superbugs that
antibiotics can’t touch.
A big cause of this is
the push by drug companies to get patients and doctors to reach for antibiotics
as a cure-all. For example, millions of doses per year are prescribed for
children and adults who have common colds, flu, sore throats, etc. Nearly all
these infections are caused by viruses — which antibiotics cannot (repeat:
cannot) cure.
Taking an antibiotic
for a cold is as useless as taking a heart drug for heartburn. The antibiotics
will do nothing for your cold, but it will help establish a colony of
drug-resistant superbugs in your body. That’s not a smart trade off.
In fact, it’s
incomprehensibly stupid.
Antibiotics are vital
drugs we need for serious, life-threatening illnesses. Squandering them on sore
throats has already brought us to the brink of superbugs that are resistant to
everything.
That’s the nightmare
of all nightmares.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is
a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also editor of the
populist newsletter, The Hightower
Lowdown. OtherWords.org