4 ms·
>Antibiotics would be far worse to deregulate than even the hardest recreational drugs, because widespread flawed use would harm other people at scale by promot
by nobody9999 4y ago
>Antibiotics would be far worse to deregulate than even the hardest recreational drugs, because widespread flawed use would harm other people at scale by promoting drug resistent strains.
That particular cat is well out of the bag as, according to the WHO[0], a full 1/3 of antibiotics users obtained their last doses without a prescription. In fact, many countries (unlike the US) don't require prescriptions for antibiotics.
Which really sucks, as antibiotic resistance will (barring some serious scientific breakthrough(s)) likely be a huge problem over the next century or so.
I don't have a good answer WRT that, but agree with much of what you wrote.
[0] https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/21-11-2022-1-in-3-use-antibiotics-without-prescription--who-europe-s-study-shows https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/21-11-2022-1-in-3-use-a...
- GoldenRacer 4y agoAnd that's just humans using antibiotics. Roughly 2/3rds of antibiotics are used for veterinary purposes. But yes, we need to be much more careful with how we use antibiotics than we currently are and I also don't have a good answer for how that happens.