7 ms·

Keep in mind that media outlets are unlikely to point out the fact that antibiotic resistance is mainly caused by antibiotic overuse on farms for livestock (due

Keep in mind that media outlets are unlikely to point out the fact that antibiotic resistance is mainly caused by antibiotic overuse on farms for livestock (due to the conflict of interest when so many ad dollars come from food). Yes, humans failing to finish their run for the time prescribed for them, and use of antibiotics for viral infections have been a problem too. But those are completely dwarfed by farm use. Funding for new antibiotic research should come from taxes on big agribusiness and there should be more regulation on antibiotic use for livestock.

S_Daedalus 10y ago
This is true for so many issues, including water usage, greenhouse gasses, and broader forms of pollution.
necessity 10y ago
Any citation on that?
- aaronbrethorst 10y ago
  A Google search for the terms antibiotic resistance livestock turns up: http://www.cdc.gov/narms/animals.html http://www.cdc.gov/narms/animals.html, http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/industrial-agriculture/prescription-for-trouble.html http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-..., and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17600481 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17600481 on the first page. Edit: In the off-chance this is about the media conspiracy theory thing... http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/feeding-antibiotics-farm-animals-may-worsen-climate-change-n580406 http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/feeding-antibiotic... http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46016296/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/antibiotics-breed-drug-resistant-bacteria-pigs/#.V8ZAK6OZPdQ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46016296/ns/technology_and_science... http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/11/16/kids-drug-resistant-bacteria-blamed-on-farm-antibiotic-use.html http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/11/16/kids-drug-resistant... http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/07/11/infection-experts-warn-more-us-superbug-cases-in-coming-months.html http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/07/11/infection-experts-w...
  - aaron695 10y ago
    I think they meant the conspiracy "media outlets are unlikely to point out the fact"
    - ivanca 10y ago
      Conflict of interests is not a conspiracy... unless you believe stuff like Fox not covering Republican scandals is a conspiracy (its just Fox being Fox) Yeah, it may be a lie but not much else.
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        There was a big special on this on PBS Frontline.
scurvy 10y ago
There's a study for treating gonorrhea with solithromycin going on right now [0]. It's a single dose, too (alleviating fears of not finishing the entire run). [0] http://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/antimicrobials/news/online/%7B40d7b1e0-bbe5-442d-8a94-b33742cb5937%7D/trials-underway-to-evaluate-solithromycin-for-gonorrhea-nash http://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/antimicrobials/news...
adevine 10y ago
I highly doubt that this is true for gonorrhea.
flashman 10y ago
I highly doubt, jokey rural stereotypes aside, that antibiotic resistant gonorrhea is being transmitted from livestock to humans.
- Wicher 10y ago
  That's not how it works. Eating the livestock (or drinking the milk) transfers antibiotics to our bodies, and then we become the environment in which bacteria are selected for resistance to antibiotics.
  - refurb 10y ago
    That's not how it works at all. The amount of antibiotics in slaughtered livestock is miniscule. In fact, the FDA requires a "clean out" phase for livestock treated with certain drugs to ensure the levels in the final meat are low enough.
    - chris_va 10y ago
      Ok, to clarify: Antibiotic resistance is generally spread via plasmid-mediated resistance. Overuse of antibiotics in any capacity, regardless of ingestion into humans, causes some bacteria to evolve resistance. Bacteria are promiscuous with their DNA, and resistance by one organism on one context (e.g. livestock) can easily get transmitted to a completely different organism in a completely context (e.g. humans). Having said all of that, there are many potential antibiotics out there that haven't been fully researched (almost all currently prescribed antibiotics are beta lactam variants, which is only one small class), and this "cannot be treated" stuff is mostly just bad journalism.
- frankus 10y ago
  Some (maybe all?) bacteria are capable of horizontal gene transfer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer#Prokaryotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer#Proka...) For example if someone were infected with both antibiotic-resistant gut bacteria (acquired from eating contaminated meat) and gonorrhea, it's possible the latter could acquire antibiotic resistance genes from the former.
noufalibrahim 10y ago
There was an article I read (can't find the link now) about how people discard unused antibiotics improperly and how bacteria in the wild become resistant over time.
scubadude 10y ago
A figure I saw recently is 80% of antibiotic use in Australia is in livestock.
Houshalter 10y ago
Well something between 50-80% of antibiotics are used in agriculture. Which is huge, but it's within the same order of magnitude. I'm not sure there is evidence that the majority of antibiotic resistance is caused by agriculture. I know for example my brother takes a low dose of antibiotics everyday to treat acne. Lots of people do. That can't possibly be good for preventing resistance. Also the germs animals have are different than those in humans. Do cattle spread gohnerrea? And the antibiotics they use are different than those used in human medicine as well. The biggest problem is it is becoming resistant even to the last line antibiotics we have, and that can't be from agriculture.
- tanto 10y ago
  Ask your brother to stop the intake of sugar completely for 3 month (including all the hidden sugar in any processed food). I know this from myself and couple people which had acne that if you stop the intake of artificial sugar long enough the acne will mostly vanish. Even today whenever I eat high amounts of sugar I know for sure what will happen. I think this is a good example of misuse of antibiotics.
  - ricksplat 10y ago
    I can say that this corresponds to my experience. I underwent a rigorous transformation from obese teenager one summer, which included a fairly strict diet. I used to have bad acne but since then have been barely troubled by it. I have a number of friends who have acne trouble who say they have tried "everything" but I wonder have they tried anything like this for such a protracted period ...
    - tanto 10y ago
      It is really hard to stop eating sugar so drastically but it helped me a lot. After that eating even a small piece of chocolate was giving me a sugar high. High in the sense of you feel it in your whole buddy and get goosebumps. Nowadays I am more relaxed regarding sugar but I am nowhere close to "bad old times". I went from 2L-3L of high sugar soft drinks like Coke and high amounts of sweets every day to zero for a while and after that started slowly.
witty_username 10y ago
> big agribusiness Are small agribusiness(es?) exempt? Why should they?
- JanezStupar 10y ago
  Because all the incentives and subsidies are geared towards big agribusiness. Small agribusinesses are hardly getting by.
- PeterisP 10y ago
  For the particular case of antibiotic use, what I've seen is that farms with 10 cows generally apply antibiotics only when needed and farms with 500 cows generally apply antibiotics by putting it in everyones feed; it makes economic sense for both of them because of differences on how they work with these cows every day.
  - JanezStupar 10y ago
    Large agribusiness do other deplorable stuff - i.e. letting cows die and collecting insurance instead of treating them, etc...
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      From what I've seen, letting cows die or mistreating them is a much worse problem in small agribusiness. This of course depends on local regulation and legislation. But at least over here (northern EU), the bureaucracy is heavy and requirements quite strong. Large-scale farming units have internal processes and they have more resources; there are many people doing the work with more thorough official oversight. Small-scale animal care, i.e. family or single-person farms, may be dependent on one person only. When illness - particularly mental illness - or old age kicks in, the animals may be neglected or mistreated in abhorrent ways. On the other hand, small-scale agribusiness is also where the best animal care can be seen, there is actually an emotional bond between the carer and the animals. Bad care is eventually caught because when you can't treat your animals well, you won't do your paperwork either. However, it is a strain on small farms as there is a fixed overhead in paperwork that is not much dependent on farm size, so there's a lot more to do per animal on small farms and thus there is more work/cost.
saiya-jin 10y ago
go into any 3rd world country, ie whole south east asia/india, africa, south america etc. and you will find strong antibiotics sold freely over the counter for next to nothing, no prescriptions, people taking them at their will, without proper knowledge. so no it's far from only farming, billions of people are doing antibiotics in very wrong way
- rmsaksida 10y ago
  That is just not true. In Brazil where I live antibiotics are highly controlled and pharmacies will get in trouble if they sell them without a prescription. They take several steps to verify each prescription. The same is true for other countries I've visited in South America. Self medication is a real problem but it's usually done by people who have leftovers from past treatments or get these from friends.
- superflit 10y ago
  I just want to corroborate the poster with Brazilian data. Yes there is a 'law' that requires prescription and safe keeping of records about each sell. But as the same laws on every level they are only enforced at the middle class level (higher and lower class do not care). I am Brazilian and I do wish that law was more pervasive but My wish do not turn the facts other way. So yes, abuse in third world is rampant. Facts [1] - http://noticias.r7.com/bahia/remedios-vendidos-sem-autorizacao-sao-apreendidos-em-bairro-de-salvador-05082016 http://noticias.r7.com/bahia/remedios-vendidos-sem-autorizac... [2] - https://www.google.com.br/#q=antibioticos+vendidos+irregularmente+brasil https://www.google.com.br/#q=antibioticos+vendidos+irregular...
  - rmsaksida 10y ago
    I don't think that's a widespread problem when it comes to antibiotics. For some other kinds of medication, it's probably true that people get them from the black market (think benzos). But antibiotics? Really? Do you know anyone who has ever done that? I'm sure those places exist but to say they are affecting resistance is a very big claim. And it has nothing to do with social class, every pharmacy I've been to in Brazil has been similarly paranoid about prescriptions, regardless of the neighborhood or clientele. Maybe that's a Southeast bias, but I'd like to see some hard data about black market antibiotics being so common.
throwanem 10y ago
Do cows often get gonorrhea? I mean sure, you hear stories about lonely farmers, but...
agumonkey 10y ago
How much of "modern" western societies are built on the reality distortion field of big corps advertising ? Felt like a sibling to VR and AR.
vibrio 10y ago
There haves been increasing regulatory scrutiny given to the prophylactic use of antibiotic in animals (perhaps later than would have been optimal) http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/GuidanceComplianceEnforcement/GuidanceforIndustry/ucm216939.htm http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/GuidanceComplianceEnforc... Some of the biggest challenges in antibiotics are economics not technical e.g., http://emerald.tufts.edu/med/apua/news/news-newsletter-vol-30-no-1-2.shtml http://emerald.tufts.edu/med/apua/news/news-newsletter-vol-3... The only recent company built on antibiotics (Cubist) was purchased for a revenue stream and its R&D was disassembled by Pharma in the last year or so. You can bet that a good amount of organization knowledge has been lost. There are some start ups out there, but as far as I understand, there is little will to provide of equity or strategic funding for early development programs/companies. With the timelines in this industry, that doesn't bode well for 'breakthroughs' in the near future. With the recent idiocy and avarice of some of the "actors" in the industry (e.g., pharma bro, epi-pen). I am bracing for a backlash on pricing, even on needed products) which would further decrease the economic will for companies/funds to invest in early stage programs. Some comments here tout that the the wonders of science will solve this given time. Maybe so, but it's also possible that the burden of economics (and lowest-common denominator politics) could quench the wonders of science for the near term.

S_Daedalus 10y ago

This is true for so many issues, including water usage, greenhouse gasses, and broader forms of pollution.

necessity 10y ago

Any citation on that?

aaronbrethorst 10y ago
A Google search for the terms antibiotic resistance livestock turns up: http://www.cdc.gov/narms/animals.html http://www.cdc.gov/narms/animals.html, http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/industrial-agriculture/prescription-for-trouble.html http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-..., and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17600481 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17600481 on the first page. Edit: In the off-chance this is about the media conspiracy theory thing... http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/feeding-antibiotics-farm-animals-may-worsen-climate-change-n580406 http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/feeding-antibiotic... http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46016296/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/antibiotics-breed-drug-resistant-bacteria-pigs/#.V8ZAK6OZPdQ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46016296/ns/technology_and_science... http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/11/16/kids-drug-resistant-bacteria-blamed-on-farm-antibiotic-use.html http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/11/16/kids-drug-resistant... http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/07/11/infection-experts-warn-more-us-superbug-cases-in-coming-months.html http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/07/11/infection-experts-w...
- aaron695 10y ago
  I think they meant the conspiracy "media outlets are unlikely to point out the fact"
  - ivanca 10y ago
    Conflict of interests is not a conspiracy... unless you believe stuff like Fox not covering Republican scandals is a conspiracy (its just Fox being Fox) Yeah, it may be a lie but not much else.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      There was a big special on this on PBS Frontline.

scurvy 10y ago

There's a study for treating gonorrhea with solithromycin going on right now [0]. It's a single dose, too (alleviating fears of not finishing the entire run). [0] http://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/antimicrobials/news/online/%7B40d7b1e0-bbe5-442d-8a94-b33742cb5937%7D/trials-underway-to-evaluate-solithromycin-for-gonorrhea-nash http://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/antimicrobials/news...

adevine 10y ago

I highly doubt that this is true for gonorrhea.

flashman 10y ago

I highly doubt, jokey rural stereotypes aside, that antibiotic resistant gonorrhea is being transmitted from livestock to humans.

Wicher 10y ago
That's not how it works. Eating the livestock (or drinking the milk) transfers antibiotics to our bodies, and then we become the environment in which bacteria are selected for resistance to antibiotics.
- refurb 10y ago
  That's not how it works at all. The amount of antibiotics in slaughtered livestock is miniscule. In fact, the FDA requires a "clean out" phase for livestock treated with certain drugs to ensure the levels in the final meat are low enough.
  - chris_va 10y ago
    Ok, to clarify: Antibiotic resistance is generally spread via plasmid-mediated resistance. Overuse of antibiotics in any capacity, regardless of ingestion into humans, causes some bacteria to evolve resistance. Bacteria are promiscuous with their DNA, and resistance by one organism on one context (e.g. livestock) can easily get transmitted to a completely different organism in a completely context (e.g. humans). Having said all of that, there are many potential antibiotics out there that haven't been fully researched (almost all currently prescribed antibiotics are beta lactam variants, which is only one small class), and this "cannot be treated" stuff is mostly just bad journalism.
frankus 10y ago
Some (maybe all?) bacteria are capable of horizontal gene transfer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer#Prokaryotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer#Proka...) For example if someone were infected with both antibiotic-resistant gut bacteria (acquired from eating contaminated meat) and gonorrhea, it's possible the latter could acquire antibiotic resistance genes from the former.

noufalibrahim 10y ago

There was an article I read (can't find the link now) about how people discard unused antibiotics improperly and how bacteria in the wild become resistant over time.

scubadude 10y ago

A figure I saw recently is 80% of antibiotic use in Australia is in livestock.

Houshalter 10y ago

Well something between 50-80% of antibiotics are used in agriculture. Which is huge, but it's within the same order of magnitude. I'm not sure there is evidence that the majority of antibiotic resistance is caused by agriculture. I know for example my brother takes a low dose of antibiotics everyday to treat acne. Lots of people do. That can't possibly be good for preventing resistance. Also the germs animals have are different than those in humans. Do cattle spread gohnerrea? And the antibiotics they use are different than those used in human medicine as well. The biggest problem is it is becoming resistant even to the last line antibiotics we have, and that can't be from agriculture.

tanto 10y ago
Ask your brother to stop the intake of sugar completely for 3 month (including all the hidden sugar in any processed food). I know this from myself and couple people which had acne that if you stop the intake of artificial sugar long enough the acne will mostly vanish. Even today whenever I eat high amounts of sugar I know for sure what will happen. I think this is a good example of misuse of antibiotics.
- ricksplat 10y ago
  I can say that this corresponds to my experience. I underwent a rigorous transformation from obese teenager one summer, which included a fairly strict diet. I used to have bad acne but since then have been barely troubled by it. I have a number of friends who have acne trouble who say they have tried "everything" but I wonder have they tried anything like this for such a protracted period ...
  - tanto 10y ago
    It is really hard to stop eating sugar so drastically but it helped me a lot. After that eating even a small piece of chocolate was giving me a sugar high. High in the sense of you feel it in your whole buddy and get goosebumps. Nowadays I am more relaxed regarding sugar but I am nowhere close to "bad old times". I went from 2L-3L of high sugar soft drinks like Coke and high amounts of sweets every day to zero for a while and after that started slowly.

witty_username 10y ago

> big agribusiness Are small agribusiness(es?) exempt? Why should they?

JanezStupar 10y ago
Because all the incentives and subsidies are geared towards big agribusiness. Small agribusinesses are hardly getting by.
PeterisP 10y ago
For the particular case of antibiotic use, what I've seen is that farms with 10 cows generally apply antibiotics only when needed and farms with 500 cows generally apply antibiotics by putting it in everyones feed; it makes economic sense for both of them because of differences on how they work with these cows every day.
- JanezStupar 10y ago
  Large agribusiness do other deplorable stuff - i.e. letting cows die and collecting insurance instead of treating them, etc...
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    From what I've seen, letting cows die or mistreating them is a much worse problem in small agribusiness. This of course depends on local regulation and legislation. But at least over here (northern EU), the bureaucracy is heavy and requirements quite strong. Large-scale farming units have internal processes and they have more resources; there are many people doing the work with more thorough official oversight. Small-scale animal care, i.e. family or single-person farms, may be dependent on one person only. When illness - particularly mental illness - or old age kicks in, the animals may be neglected or mistreated in abhorrent ways. On the other hand, small-scale agribusiness is also where the best animal care can be seen, there is actually an emotional bond between the carer and the animals. Bad care is eventually caught because when you can't treat your animals well, you won't do your paperwork either. However, it is a strain on small farms as there is a fixed overhead in paperwork that is not much dependent on farm size, so there's a lot more to do per animal on small farms and thus there is more work/cost.

saiya-jin 10y ago

go into any 3rd world country, ie whole south east asia/india, africa, south america etc. and you will find strong antibiotics sold freely over the counter for next to nothing, no prescriptions, people taking them at their will, without proper knowledge. so no it's far from only farming, billions of people are doing antibiotics in very wrong way

rmsaksida 10y ago
That is just not true. In Brazil where I live antibiotics are highly controlled and pharmacies will get in trouble if they sell them without a prescription. They take several steps to verify each prescription. The same is true for other countries I've visited in South America. Self medication is a real problem but it's usually done by people who have leftovers from past treatments or get these from friends.
superflit 10y ago
I just want to corroborate the poster with Brazilian data. Yes there is a 'law' that requires prescription and safe keeping of records about each sell. But as the same laws on every level they are only enforced at the middle class level (higher and lower class do not care). I am Brazilian and I do wish that law was more pervasive but My wish do not turn the facts other way. So yes, abuse in third world is rampant. Facts [1] - http://noticias.r7.com/bahia/remedios-vendidos-sem-autorizacao-sao-apreendidos-em-bairro-de-salvador-05082016 http://noticias.r7.com/bahia/remedios-vendidos-sem-autorizac... [2] - https://www.google.com.br/#q=antibioticos+vendidos+irregularmente+brasil https://www.google.com.br/#q=antibioticos+vendidos+irregular...
- rmsaksida 10y ago
  I don't think that's a widespread problem when it comes to antibiotics. For some other kinds of medication, it's probably true that people get them from the black market (think benzos). But antibiotics? Really? Do you know anyone who has ever done that? I'm sure those places exist but to say they are affecting resistance is a very big claim. And it has nothing to do with social class, every pharmacy I've been to in Brazil has been similarly paranoid about prescriptions, regardless of the neighborhood or clientele. Maybe that's a Southeast bias, but I'd like to see some hard data about black market antibiotics being so common.

throwanem 10y ago

Do cows often get gonorrhea? I mean sure, you hear stories about lonely farmers, but...

agumonkey 10y ago

How much of "modern" western societies are built on the reality distortion field of big corps advertising ? Felt like a sibling to VR and AR.

vibrio 10y ago

There haves been increasing regulatory scrutiny given to the prophylactic use of antibiotic in animals (perhaps later than would have been optimal) http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/GuidanceComplianceEnforcement/GuidanceforIndustry/ucm216939.htm http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/GuidanceComplianceEnforc... Some of the biggest challenges in antibiotics are economics not technical e.g., http://emerald.tufts.edu/med/apua/news/news-newsletter-vol-30-no-1-2.shtml http://emerald.tufts.edu/med/apua/news/news-newsletter-vol-3... The only recent company built on antibiotics (Cubist) was purchased for a revenue stream and its R&D was disassembled by Pharma in the last year or so. You can bet that a good amount of organization knowledge has been lost. There are some start ups out there, but as far as I understand, there is little will to provide of equity or strategic funding for early development programs/companies. With the timelines in this industry, that doesn't bode well for 'breakthroughs' in the near future. With the recent idiocy and avarice of some of the "actors" in the industry (e.g., pharma bro, epi-pen). I am bracing for a backlash on pricing, even on needed products) which would further decrease the economic will for companies/funds to invest in early stage programs. Some comments here tout that the the wonders of science will solve this given time. Maybe so, but it's also possible that the burden of economics (and lowest-common denominator politics) could quench the wonders of science for the near term.