by Barbara Allen

I am writing this article more or less from my “sick bed” – where I fight the effects of the latest flu turned into bronchitis. It started last week when my 87 yr. old father came down with the flu, followed a couple days later by my mother and then a day later by me. The fever and cough thing seemed quickly to become a bacterial infection for all of us. And much to our chagrin the antibiotic we are taking has had no noticeable effect at all. When I was in Maui this winter visiting my son I met a woman with a similar illness who had gone through 3 antibiotics to no avail. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is on the rise around the world and one of the primary reasons is the vast increase in the use of anti-biotics in ways that help to build the resistant forms.

From an article on the Scientific American website called The Challenge of Antibiotic Resistance by Stuart B. Levy

“Investigators have shown that when one member of a household chronically takes an antibiotic to treat acne, the concentration of antibiotic-resistant bacteria on the skin of family members rises. Similarly, heavy use of antibiotics in such settings as hospitals, day care centers and farms (where the drugs are often given to livestock for nonmedicinal purposes) increases the levels of resistant bacteria in people and other organisms who are not being treated--including in individuals who live near those epicenters of high consumption or who pass through the centers.”
 

Antibiotics are being put in hand cream and baby “wipes” and kitchen counter “wipes”. We have become a culture of anti-biotic obsessives.

Unfortunately this way of using antibiotics is causing the very problem we have feared. Because of the complex relationship of resistant and susceptible strains of bacteria to one another and to us and to antibiotics and the way in which they multiply and mutate, our ignorant attempts to eliminate them from our lives are beginning to cause some serious problems. How many of you have partial bottles of antibiotics left over from the last time you were sick? When you started feeling better – you stopped taking them, right? You didn’t know that what you were probably doing was creating a resistant strain in your own body. By not taking all the prescribed dosage of an anti-biotic we risk the possibility of not killing off ALL the offenders in our system. Each time we do this we add to the vast system of developing antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Already in New York City there are forms of TB that are untreatable with any known antibiotic. Around the country doctors are finding more and more cases of illness that can no longer be cured with antibiotics.

As most of you may know antibiotics are used in raising livestock. Stuart Levy says

”More than 40 percent of the antibiotics manufactured in the U.S. are given to animals. Some of that amount goes to treating or preventing infection, but the lion's share is mixed into feed to promote growth. In this last application, amounts too small to combat infection are delivered for weeks or months at a time. No one is entirely sure how the drugs support growth. Clearly, though, this long-term exposure to low doses is the perfect formula for selecting increasing numbers of resistant bacteria in the treated animals--which may then pass the microbes to caretakers and, more broadly, to people who prepare and consume undercooked meat.”

”In agriculture, antibiotics are applied as aerosols to acres of fruit trees, for controlling or preventing bacterial infections. High concentrations may kill all the bacteria on the trees at the time of spraying, but lingering antibiotic residues can encourage the growth of resistant bacteria that later colonize the fruit during processing and shipping. The aerosols also hit more than the targeted trees. They can be carried considerable distances to other trees and food plants, where they are too dilute to eliminate full-blown infections but are still capable of killing off sensitive bacteria and thus giving the edge to resistant versions. Here, again, resistant bacteria can make their way into people through the food chain, finding a home in the intestinal tract after the produce is eaten.”

Europe banned the sale and use of livestock treated with antibiotics and hormones many years ago because European scientists foresaw the possible effects. And now finally the pressure has become enough that several of the major US chicken producers have agreed to stop using antibiotics in a non-therapeutic way. Tyson, Gold Kist and Perdue have just agreed to end this practice. Several major fast food chains also agreed to stop using chicken that is treated with antibiotics. That only leaves the pig and cattle growers and the fruit growing industry.

As Stuart Levy goes on to say “One component of the solution is recognizing that bacteria are a natural, and needed, part of life. Bacteria, which are microscopic, single-cell entities, abound on inanimate surfaces and on parts of the body that make contact with the outer world, including the skin, the mucous membranes and the lining of the intestinal tract. Most live blamelessly. In fact, they often protect us from disease, because they compete with, and thus limit the proliferation of, pathogenic bacteria--the minority of species that can multiply aggressively (into the millions) and damage tissues or otherwise cause illness. The benign competitors can be important allies in the fight against antibiotic-resistant pathogens.”

Reversing Resistance

There are things we can do right now. We can support farmers in finding inexpensive alternatives for protecting fruit trees and to encouraging animal growth. We are told that improving hygiene would go a long way toward enhancing livestock development.

At home we can carefully wash all raw fruit and vegetables to clean off both resistant bacteria and possible antibiotic residue. If you or your child are given a prescription for antibiotics make sure that the whole course of treatment is taken. Don’t save ANY. Don’t ask for antibiotics to treat colds and viruses or minor conditions like acne. You may use antibiotic ointments on small cuts, but don’t use hand lotions and other products that include antibacterial agents. We are doing much more harm than good in using these products

Again from the Scientific American article:

The time has come for global society to accept bacteria as normal, generally beneficial components of the world and not try to eliminate them--except when they give rise to disease. Reversal of resistance requires a new awareness of the broad consequences of antibiotic use--a perspective that concerns itself not only with curing bacterial disease at the moment but also with preserving microbial communities in the long run, so that bacteria susceptible to antibiotics will always be there to out-compete resistant strains. Similar enlightenment should influence the use of drugs to combat parasites, fungi and viruses. Now that consumption of those medicines has begun to rise dramatically, troubling resistance to these other microorganisms has begun to climb as well.”

On February 27, 2002 Representative Sherrod Brown (D-OH), introduced H.R. 3804, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Human Treatment Act. It is an important step forward in the effort to stem the public health crisis of antibiotic-resistant infections.

“H.R. 3804 would phase-out the nontherapeutic use of eight types of antibiotics in animal agriculture, including penicillins, tetracyclines, macrolides, lincomycin, bacitracin, virginiamycin, aminoglycosides, and sulfonamides. All are used in human medicine or are so closely related to human use drugs that they trigger cross-resistance. In the future, if any antibiotic used nontherapeutically in animal agriculture were determined to be medically-important to humans, that drug would also be restricted to therapeutic use only in animals. By targeting the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics, the bill properly allows sick animals to receive necessary treatment.

The American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the World Health Organization, and other leading health organizations oppose both the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animal agriculture, and the therapeutic use of fluoroquinolones in poultry.”

Send a letter to your Member of Congress and ask him or her to stand up for public health and safety by supporting H.R. 3804, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Human Treatment Act.

To participate further you can write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, work on this issue at the state and local level, and generally spread the word. To get more involved, please contact field director Claudia Malloy at cmalloy@cspinet.org

The author of much of the material used for this article, STUART B. LEVY, is a professor of molecular biology and microbiology, professor of medicine and director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at the Tufts University School of Medicine. He is also president of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics and president-elect of the American Society for Microbiology. To read the article in full go to http://www.sciam.com/1998/0398issue/0398levy.html

Believe me – all you have to do is watch your elderly parents struggle with an illness that is resistant to antibiotics – or deal with it yourself – to take this issue very seriously. I hope it doesn’t have to go that far for most of us.

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This column comes to you courtesy of the Environmental Concerns Group of the DeFuniak Springs Garden Club.