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Asked by anon-182152 to Lauren on 25 Jun 2018.
Question: How would you respond to the overuse of antibiotics
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Lauren Burns answered on 25 Jun 2018:
Great question! This is a two-part solution. First, when people feel ill, they need to go to the doctors less. There are many useful over-the-counter medications that can help. Secondly, doctors should prescribe them less. However, doctors just want people to get better, so really each person should take the care into their own hands by using the over-the-counter medication and avoid seeing the doctors for minor ailments.
Comments
Daniel commented on :
Totally agree with Lauren. However most of our antibiotic resistance doesn’t stem from misuse in this country, but in countries such as India and China, where antibiotic usage is really not restricted at all. This problem is compounded by the fact that India also doesn’t recognise most intellectual property (laws that say that only the person/company that invented the drug can sell it), so new drugs are used indiscriminately and not held back for last use scenarios. This is a global problem, and therefore requires a global solution – this however is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Also use of antibiotics in cattle rearing is problematic as they introduce antibiotics into the general environment in a way that bacteria can easily develop immunity.
Plus it has become more and more difficult to find new antibiotics – there hasn’t been a new one produced in the last ten years. However, it’s not all gloomy! Scientists are developing totally different methods of fighting infections, and have also developed tools to search more and more bacteria for antibiotics.
joeyshepherd commented on :
Agree with Lauren and Daniel. Although over prescription of antibiotics here is a problem, it’s really a global problem as Daniel says. But then there is the issue of not just stopping countries like India from selling antibiotics indiscriminately, because you want people to be treated when they are ill!
There is also a huge input into spread of antibiotic resistance from agriculture, the farming industry. Meat and poultry raised in large farms tend to be given a lot of antibiotics. There’s also teh spread of antibiotic resistance genes in the water systems from industrial and agricultural run off, so it’s not just over prescription.
In our lab we are working on several new methods to fight infections, mainy working with chemists to develop special polymers that grab on to bacteria and don’t lead to any resistance. We’re also working with metals like silver and copper to fight infections without antibiotics, so it’s not all bad news!