Speech-Zac Byrd

Last year I made a couple sectional cuts for swimming and got to travel to Nashville for the sectional meet.  For a swimmer this is a pretty big meet.  I was ecstatic to get the opportunity to swim in this meet for the entire month leading up to it.  But a week before the meet I got a sore throat.  It was a whole week before the meet so I was sure I’d be fine by the time my races rolled around.  I went to the doctor and he prescribed an antibiotic of which I can’t remember its name. I had to swim through the meet sick and after the meet was over I felt better.  By the time the meet was over it was about 10 days, which is about the time I would have gotten over the sore throat without using medicine.  The antibiotics helped me very little or didn’t help me at all. Too many companies are overusing antibiotics to treat animals and bacteria resistance is becoming more and more common.

Now, drug companies are putting less and less money towards researching new antibiotics.  Instead drug companies are now focusing more on chronic illnesses because of money.  It’s a money issue.  People use antibiotics for about 10 days and then they are done with them until the next time they get sick.  But people with chronic illnesses have to have medicine every day for the rest of their life, making these medicines more profitable.  As the NY times points out, the FDA had a “scandal” several years ago over a drug that caused liver damage.  Because of this scandal the FDA is more cautious about approving other antibiotics. Combined with the lack of revenue flowing in for antibiotics, the crackdown on drugs has been rough with the FDA only approving two antibiotics in the past decade.

Hardly any of us feel the effects of this now.  But the snowball effect has already started.  It started when we changed animal’s diets.  Animal’s main diet now is corn because it fattens them up quicker and brings them to our plates faster.  But animals, like cows, aren’t used to eating corn, they are supposed to eat grass.  As seen in Food Incorporated when a cow is forced to eat corn its body is prone to sickness.  These animals will then be treated with antibiotics, but not all animals take antibiotics when they are just sick. Some take it as a preventative measure.  Antibiotics used on the farm are not usually given out to treat sick animals, instead they are given out to healthy animals to prevent them from contracting an illness. Farmers feed animals antibiotics to kill off any bacteria the animal might fight.  The idea is the less energy the animal has to use to fight off diseases, the quicker it will fatten up.  These animals don’t need antibiotics when they are healthy.  And according to the NY times “The overuse of antibiotics in people and animals, often for conditions for which the drugs are ineffective or not needed, is seen as a driving force in the development of resistant bacteria.”

As stated by the Washington Post, “Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are spreading fast and now kill at least 23,000 Americans each year.”  The bacteria that affects livestock has constantly been getting stronger posing a threat to humans.  A Washington Post writer published an article about casualties that occur in hospitals due to the overuse of antibiotics in animal feed.  The main story he emphasized was about a “66-year-old woman”.  She was recovering from a heart bypass when she suddenly developed respiratory failure and a serious infection. Doctors quickly gave her an antibiotic that usually works but this this time it didn’t.   The doctors turned to a newer antibiotic that was supposed to target her sickness, but the bacteria in her body were also resistant to this drug. The woman died soon after.

Antibiotics are intended to return users back to full health.  Since they have been used as a preventative measure towards fighting bacteria, the bacteria has evolved to counteract this defense.  It’s like when we use hand-sanitizer.  A bottle of Purell will always say “kills 99.9% of germs”.  After it’s used it leaves behind the strongest germs on our hands.  When antibiotics are given to livestock they kill off most of the bacteria the livestock is fighting.  And because of this overuse we now have to deal with the stronger bacteria.  Since drug companies are laying off the revenue for antibiotic research, I don’t see how we can stay ahead of constantly evolving bacteria.