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My first reaction when reading this of course was: what about resistance? But then I thought: as long as it is standard practise to heavily use antibiotics in m
by _ph_ 9y ago
My first reaction when reading this of course was: what about resistance? But then I thought: as long as it is standard practise to heavily use antibiotics in meat farming, we shouldn't point at any good usage to save human life. And it indeed seems to be a faszinating and very beneficial usage of antibiotics. Beyond its obvious humanitarian benefit, lowering child mortality seems to be the working method to limit population growth.
- enriquto 9y agoThere is a somewhat unhealthy obsession with antibiotic resistance. The problem is not as scary as it may sound. It turns out that antibiotic-resistant strains are much weaker than normal strains in the absence of antibiotics (because they use a great deal of resources to be antibiotic resistant), and they tend to disappear quickly.
- Retric 9y agoIt's not a big deal for healthy people and non fatal diseases. It's however a big deal when you need antibiotics the most. So, the choice is to reserve them to the most extreme cases which will save the most human lives possible. Or, use them all over the place improving the average quality of life at the expense of significantly more people dying. I think it's reasonable for humanity to pick either option, but pretending it's not an important choice is over simplified.
- frockington 9y agoThank you for saying this. I have been looking for the correct verbage to say this for a while.
- _ph_ 9y agoThere are deaths from resistant strains. Because people got an infection, and there was no medicine to treat it. Untreated infections are like russian roulette - many survive them, but not all. After centuries where people would just die of infections, we had a few good decades. Where we had many viruses covered by vacinations and bacterial infections by antibiotics. But vaccination rates are not as good as they could be, and we are putting the antibiotics at risk. That is a step back.
- John_KZ 9y agoTwo wrongs don't make a right. I disagree with the heavy use of antibiotics on humans and animals alike for the same reason: Living your life knee-deep in shit and mud is the problem, and antibiotics won't solve it. Africa needs to develop infrastructure and cities. Artificially provided access to things like antibiotics but not basic sanitation leads to more problems than it solves.
- simonh 9y agoAfrica is developing infrastructure and cities, but it takes time. These we should do X before we do Y arguments really are tiresome. It is possible for the human race as a whole to both walk and chew gum at the same time.
- millermp12 9y agoChina seems to develop infrastructure and cities overnight.