Antibiotic resistance: Bacteria are winning the war | Frank Swain | Science | guardian.co.uk

"None of us have the answers as to why the issue of antimicrobial resistance does not capture more meaningful attention by governments and governmental agencies.  The problem is that it is somewhat akin to climate change and so slow and insidious that people, and notably our politicians, are lulled asleep."

~Professor John Conly~

Chairman of the Board for the Canadian Committee on Antibiotic Resistance

~(Alexander Fleming)~

"In what has surely become the most ritualised medical practice since the Hippocratic Oath, the World Health Organization took to the stage again today to warn that the misuse of antibiotics was threatening to render one of our most potent medicines useless. This comes a decade after an identical appeal from the organisation warned of a global crisis in the making.

Health experts have been ringing the alarm over antimicrobial resistance for so long that it seems to have become part of our collective background noise, like the endless rasp of waves on the shore. And like stupid tourists, we sleep in the sun while the tide comes in."

Antibiotic resistance: Bacteria are winning the war Frank Swain Science guardian.co.uk:

Although previous campaigns in France and the USA have achieved substantial reductions in the prescription of antibiotics, their uncontrolled use in other countries has undermined those successes – microbes do not respect national borders. As such, the failure of governments to control drug resistance has often been labelled a "tragedy of the commons".

As a veterinarian  in the  USA, will have to object to this claim.

 

 A sad fact. 

Many veterinarians give antibiotics to just about every patient that walks into their clinic; even if the symptom is just....."ain't acting right." 

 

Once had a professor comment:

"Eighty percent of patients would have gotten better on their own."

 

Anther sad fact:
Doesn't matter. 
Clients come in expecting to get something, and want to try antibiotics first anyway.

So......
can't completely blame the veterinarians who gave up and started treating the clients instead of their pets. 

But....
do blame the ones who believe doing nothing wrong;
even taking credit for the eighty percent that got better on their own.

Seriously....
usually climate change skeptics or the religious right politically.