When We Lose Antibiotics, Here's Everything Else We'll Lose Too

&gt; Without the drugs that keep livestock healthy in concentrated agriculture, we’d lose the ability to raise them that way.<p>Antibiotics for industrial animal farms are one of the reasons bacteria develop multiple resistances. One should ban antibiotics for animals world wide. Unfortunate this wont happen, till its to late.<p>&quot;The sheep look up&quot; holds still true.

Of the many topics that seem to capture the attention most readily, tales of the apocalypse to come are perhaps the most compelling.<p>For reasons I don&#x27;t completely fathom, people gravitate toward stories of impending doom much more readily than stories of impending happiness. History shows that &#x27;good&#x27; unexpected things happen just as frequently as &#x27;bad&#x27; unexpected things happen, and consequently we get a lot of change but not necessarily all bad change or all good change.<p>Still you can write a blog post that the economy is near the breaking point, our civilization is mere moments away from collapse, or that some calamity is on the verge of wiping us out, and get all the page views you can monetize.

I suspect this problem will self-correct. It&#x27;s not that we&#x27;ve run out of choices: it&#x27;s partially that pharmaceutical companies had the narrow view that developing new antibiotic drugs is less profitable than developing drugs for chronic illness (e.g., to control cholesterol); once catastrophe hits due to bacteria being resistant to all current drugs, it will be extremely profitable to work on this class of drugs again. Take a look at this interview with Dr. John Rex M.D., (V.P., Clinical Research, AstraZeneca) [1]<p>&quot;Dr. JOHN REX: If you need an antibiotic, you need it only briefly. Indeed, that’s the— that’s the correct way to use an antibiotic. You use it only briefly.<p>And from an economic standpoint of a developer, that means you’re not— you’re not getting the return on the investment you’ve made because you’ve spent between $600 million and a billion dollars to bring that new antibiotic to market.&quot;<p>[1] <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-technology/hunting-the-nightmare-bacteria/transcript-51/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pbs.org&#x2F;wgbh&#x2F;pages&#x2F;frontline&#x2F;health-science-techn...</a>

Holy hell, antibiotics are used on fruit?<p>To be honest I was a bit smug because I don&#x27;t eat meat.<p>So much for that. Wow we are in trouble.

I see a lot of people here dismissing this as a non-problem because it wouldn&#x27;t be of apocalyptic proportions. I don&#x27;t think anybody with two brain cells to rub together would say losing antibiotics would be an extinction event, that&#x27;s not the point. The point is that infections will likely become the number one killer, it already is number two[1].<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...</a>

<i>When We Lose Antibiotics, Here’s Everything Else We’ll Lose Too</i><p>Well I guess all hope is lost then. The title isn&#x27;t, &quot;If We Lose Antibiotics&quot; after all.<p>So why bring it up at all? There are no (ahem) prescriptions for fixing the problem in the article. Just a clear, terrifying outline of most of the bad things that are going to happen. And a plug for her book that presumably has the cure? I read the Amazon reviews of the book (currently 25) and there isn&#x27;t much of a mention of what the purpose of reading the book is. In fact the main purpose of reading the book based on the reviews I read is that it is supposed to scare the bejesus out of you. Again, to what purpose?<p>Should I be advocating against livestock use of antibiotics? Should I be advocating for tighter control of prescribing antibiotics?<p>This could be the scariest thing in the world but honestly it seems more like sensationalist journalism and an attempt to sell a book than a call to serious action.

Aren&#x27;t drug resistant bacteria weaker though? Like reproducing slower, spreading less, being more likely to be defeated by your own immune system?<p>Also antibiotics would still be good against most bacteria since only some have evolved antibiotic resistance. I know they can sometimes spread to other species of bacteria, but they still would be at a disadvantage outside of places that use antibiotics. If you just got cut or something with random bacteria in it wouldn&#x27;t you probably be ok?

&gt; If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance — and trust me, we’re not far off<p>When did journalists become biomedical experts? I don&#x27;t want to read a story about a serious subject that says &quot;trust me&quot;.

Nothing we do on the human scale compares to the routine use of antibiotics on the agricultural scale, especially when it comes to animals...

Are we really going to care that heart surgery is no longer viable when deadly pandemics are spreading around the world killing percentiles of the population?

If you&#x27;re interested on antibiotics there&#x27;s a good Frontline piece on &quot;gram negatives&quot;.<p><a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/10/frontline-asks-has-the-age-of-antibiotics-come-to-an-end.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pbs.org&#x2F;newshour&#x2F;rundown&#x2F;2013&#x2F;10&#x2F;frontline-asks-h...</a><p>Their point was that it&#x27;s not &quot;when&quot; we reach this point ... we already have.

There is a nice simulation game where the goal is to kill all of humanity by evolving a disease:<p><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miniclip.plagueinc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.miniclip.p...</a><p>You can learn a thing or two about the problem space just by playing the game.

Is this happening actually a bad thing? With vast over population about to occur, it seems like this might be a natural solution to a difficult problem. If all the sick people start dying again as would have originally happened things like plagues&#x2F;wars will be considerably more devastating.

I would love to know the current status of using viruses (bacteriophages) to replace antibiotics.<p><a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/409905/using-viruses-to-kill-bacteria/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.technologyreview.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;409905&#x2F;using-viruses-to...</a>

There&#x27;s considerable promise in phage therapies as an alternative to antibiotics. And they may well not suffer the same problems of resistance since phages are targeted to specific bacteria.

Unfortunately, by the time there are enough regulations regarding the use of antibiotics (for livestock and agriculture) worldwide, it might just be too late.

This article is talking as if all bacteria would suddenly become resistant to everything. I doubt it would be so sudden are more of a gradual decline.

Mass hysteria and fear mongering, in the name of book sales. Blah, blah, blah. I&#x27;m not worried. I believe engineering can solve whatever microbiology and pharmaceuticals can&#x27;t. But in the spirit of the article...<p>FLEE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

Well, I&#x27;ve yet to use antibiotics, and I hope I never have to. The only time I&#x27;ve been given some was after a minor surgery.

&gt; Tattoos.<p>This triggered my FUD detector.

bring on the cricket protein powder