"The Obama administration on Thursday announced measures to tackle the growing threat of antibiotic resistance, outlining a national strategy that includes incentives for the development of new drugs, tighter stewardship of existing ones, and improvements in tracking the use of antibiotics and the microbes that are resistant to them."
Everyone in the world has used an antibiotic at some point in their life. These life-saving drugs developed in the twentieth century are responsible for saving the lives of many people who were fighting bacteria infections. Many once fatal diseases can now be easily treated with a simple prescription of an antibiotic provided by a doctor. However, the overuse of these drugs is causing diseases to evolve into new strains of the same disease that are becoming resistant to antibiotics. This trend in the diseases has been noticed for years, but only recently has the government put forth effort in hopes to slow and essentially stop this fearful future of medicine.
President Obama and his administration have passed a law that got approved by both the House and Senate to restrict the overuse of these antibiotics to slow the evolution of resistant diseases. These antibiotics are used in agriculture to keep animals safe, as well as the every day man. However, overuse is making these diseases mutate making antibiotics ineffective. This can be due to the classic example of when a person is given an antibiotic with instructions from his doctor to finish the medicine as prescribed. Many people do not realize how important it is to listen to this instruction because the doctor gives more then what may be necessary to ensure that the entire disease is destroyed. If a person stops taking his/her medicine once they feel healed, it is possible that the virus is still in your system. The disease, like humans, evolves to stay alive. What the government is doing to try to halt this is issuing laws on the ease of receiving these drugs. They are limiting the amount that can be used in agriculture. They are targeting that agriculture industry because up to 70% of antibiotics that are distributed are given to the animals raised on farms to keep them healthy, and the drugs make the animals grow faster. This action by our contemporary government exhibits how a country must reinvent their customs to achieve success in the future that benefits the common good of the people. This ideal of a country revolving around the people goes back to revolutionary times when people such as Benjamin Franklin worked constantly to reinvent the image of America. From colonial times to now, America is constantly adapting to the modern world which we live in.
For more information on the topic go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/health/us-lays-out-strategy-to-combat-crisis-of-antibiotic-resistance.html?ref=science
Laith,
ReplyDeleteI find your article very intresting and I agree with you completety. I have taken antibiotics and know that their is a limited number of them known to man and that once u take one it is ineffective in defending against viruses because it is already in your blood on very low levels. This movement is very important and essential the government protects us against.
Laith,
ReplyDeleteI have been following this topic for a while now because I find it interesting on what we use to save lives can now turn against us and create stronger bacterial diseases. You mentioned people that stop taking the medications once they feel healthy may be part of the problem, but there is research that is starting to challenge that theory. If we keep taking the medicine once we are healthy, it will indeed kill the remaining bacteria, but those remaining bacteria were competitors for cells against the stronger bacteria. In a sense, we want the weaker bacteria to survive still, so they can block out the new "super bacteria." Just a point in case you were interested. I do agree this is a problem that needs action though, nice work.