5 ms·

Antibiotics do constitute a violent outbreak, or at least direly threaten to release one.

• fleitz 13y ago
  An antibiotics tax won't solve anything. About the only effective thing you can start doing is MSRA wards in hospitals and a system of rotating antibiotics. Developing new antibiotics would probably also be a good idea, no idea what the situ looks like there.
  • alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    A tax won't solve anything, agreed, unless it's on the order of 10,000% or more. Restricting antibiotics (further than they are currently) may or may not help, but is certainly within the purview of a limited libertarian state. Restricting most (all?) other medications is not.
    • dllthomas 13y ago
      Antibiotics are used in commercial farming because they increase weight. The tax simply needs to be enough that (weight(antibioticked cow) - weight(non-antibioticked cow))*(price of beef) < (cost of antibiotics). Maybe that's "on the order of 10,000% or more", but I'd like to see numbers.
      • alexeisadeski3 13y ago
        Antibiotics are overused outside of commercial farming too.
        • dllthomas 13y ago
          Yes, but commercial farming is the single largest use of antibiotics. Cutting out that use would significantly improve things. We should continue to address other issues (educational campaigns hammering home the fact that antibiotics do nothing for viruses, and encouraging completion of the full course when you are taking antibiotics).