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The primary use-case of antibiotics remains: curing bacterial illnesses. We should not seek to increase the price of this for the least well-off in society. T
by ronaldx 13y ago
The primary use-case of antibiotics remains: curing bacterial illnesses.
We should not seek to increase the price of this for the least well-off in society.
This would potentially have a net negative effect as it allows bacterial infection to spread, requiring increased antibiotic use.
Besides, a tax on use wouldn't impact upon doctor's behaviour in the desired way (reduce non-essential use): since the doctor is still making a net profit from the prescription and it (still) acts as a convenient placebo.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ImprovedSilence 13y agoRTFA. It's a tax for use of antibiotics on livestock, not humans.
- ericcumbee 13y agoWhich the cost will be passed along to the consumer.
- potatolicious 13y agoAnd rightly so. There's no good reason why we should have cheap meat if the cost is hugely increasing our susceptibility to global pandemic. OP was talking about taxing human-use antibiotics - i.e., we shouldn't do things that will increase the price of drugs that people literally need to avoid dying.
- ronaldx 13y agoI'm sorry that you've been downvoted - because you are right. This is a tax on poor people that won't affect the majority of readers... it increases the minimum cost of producing meat. If we can't figure out high-production meat farming then eventually we're saying that meat should be something only for the wealthy.
- dllthomas 13y agoIf it's a choice between meat being something only for the wealthy and a prevalence of untreatable bacteriological infections, I'm going to go with the former.
- rwallace 13y agoMaybe the wealthy should stop eating meat too. Is it okay to torture animals for pleasure? If it is, then we should repeal the laws we currently have against it. But if it's wrong - as most people would say it is - then maybe we should stop behaving as though it becomes okay when it's done out of sight.
- ronaldx 13y agoRTA yourself (and then I'd appreciate an apology). The article is proposing that the tax be applied to every use: "But why limit it to farms?".
- aqme28 13y agoUnfortunately the primary use-case of antibiotics is actually in livestock. In the US, 80% of antibiotics produced in 2011 went to livestock[1]. [1]: http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/07/what-usda-doesnt-want-you-know-about-antibiotics-and-factory-farms http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/07/what-usda-do...
- sliverstorm 13y agoSo in what way do we restrict access to antibiotics to prevent their abuse (to the great detriment of all of humanity)?