4 ms·

I certainly didn't have a prescription. As best as I can tell, the linked article above states the FDA wants manufacturers to voluntarily label their products

I certainly didn't have a prescription. As best as I can tell, the linked article above states the FDA wants manufacturers to voluntarily label their products as prescription-only, which will presumably reduce indiscriminate selling and use of such antibiotics. They threaten a mandatory change in regulations if the problem remains. I know antibiotics are a public health problem, but I'd personally be pissed if I needed to pay extra for the drugs and a vet's involvement for such a simple thing. We're talking $6 or so for the meds I mentioned earlier. How much does the average farm vet house call cost? Beats me, but I'm not anxious to find out, and it might be better to put down an animal than shoulder such expense. The FDA (or maybe that would be the USDA?) would be better off to simply ban sale of animal products with any measurable trace of antibiotics. Period. That would certainly cause a major upset in the industry as we know it, but the living conditions of commercially-raised meat animals is appalling and could use the change.

Retric 14y ago
It's not quite as simple as your making it out to be. It would be reasonable to ban any and all use of antibiotics on livestock for any reason. If instead of an outright ban you dramatically increased the cost you get similar benefits and still allow for edge cases. PS: There is a finite amount of discoverable antibiotics FOR ALL TIME. Without a long term replacement or human extinction any and all systimatic use of antibiotics on animals will lead to significant human casualties (as in millions to billions of human lives.) Granted most of these people have not been born yet but it's way more important than a lot of other hot button issues.
- waps 14y ago
  It has been an established medical principle since 400BC that letting people die now to save others (whether more or less) in the future would never, ever, under any circumstance, be considered valid medical practice. Besides, many say it's too late. Resistance genes are in the wild and bacteriophages will spread them. Nothing can prevent that. Banning it's use on livestock at this point will most likely be an exercise in futility, like shooting the evil queen after eating the poisoned apple. In order to kill the resistance of the existing bugs we'd need to start letting people die from both kinds of bacteria, resistant ones and non-resistant ones, so that the energy efficiency the non-resistant ones gain very slowly wins out over the advantage of treatment resistance that the resistant ones have. If any small subset of humans for any reason deviates from this, it negates the effects, so effectively you cannot have even a small country disagree. Nor can you get away with only treating the rich. Not for a year or two, but likely for centuries. And even when that does happen, you still have to limit usage of the drugs. Please note that it isn't necessarily so bad. Viruses have won the resistance battle against medication decades ago, and aside from a few incidents, effects have been relatively limited. There has not been an even medium-scale pandemic. But there are quite a few viruses where getting infected means it's curtains, and no treatment is possible. One particularly scary one is rabies. Fortunately, inoculation still mostly works, with only a few exceptions (like HIV). We've lost this battle, let's just move on.
  - Retric 14y ago
    You have no idea what your talking about. First off Antibotics have never worked on Viruses, full stop. Second it's not an all or nothing story. We use far more antibiotics on Animals than people and that's a huge issue because it's eroding effectiveness not simply creating a single super bug that will now rule for all time.

Retric 14y ago

It's not quite as simple as your making it out to be. It would be reasonable to ban any and all use of antibiotics on livestock for any reason. If instead of an outright ban you dramatically increased the cost you get similar benefits and still allow for edge cases. PS: There is a finite amount of discoverable antibiotics FOR ALL TIME. Without a long term replacement or human extinction any and all systimatic use of antibiotics on animals will lead to significant human casualties (as in millions to billions of human lives.) Granted most of these people have not been born yet but it's way more important than a lot of other hot button issues.

waps 14y ago
It has been an established medical principle since 400BC that letting people die now to save others (whether more or less) in the future would never, ever, under any circumstance, be considered valid medical practice. Besides, many say it's too late. Resistance genes are in the wild and bacteriophages will spread them. Nothing can prevent that. Banning it's use on livestock at this point will most likely be an exercise in futility, like shooting the evil queen after eating the poisoned apple. In order to kill the resistance of the existing bugs we'd need to start letting people die from both kinds of bacteria, resistant ones and non-resistant ones, so that the energy efficiency the non-resistant ones gain very slowly wins out over the advantage of treatment resistance that the resistant ones have. If any small subset of humans for any reason deviates from this, it negates the effects, so effectively you cannot have even a small country disagree. Nor can you get away with only treating the rich. Not for a year or two, but likely for centuries. And even when that does happen, you still have to limit usage of the drugs. Please note that it isn't necessarily so bad. Viruses have won the resistance battle against medication decades ago, and aside from a few incidents, effects have been relatively limited. There has not been an even medium-scale pandemic. But there are quite a few viruses where getting infected means it's curtains, and no treatment is possible. One particularly scary one is rabies. Fortunately, inoculation still mostly works, with only a few exceptions (like HIV). We've lost this battle, let's just move on.
- Retric 14y ago
  You have no idea what your talking about. First off Antibotics have never worked on Viruses, full stop. Second it's not an all or nothing story. We use far more antibiotics on Animals than people and that's a huge issue because it's eroding effectiveness not simply creating a single super bug that will now rule for all time.