Health Care in America - Health News You Can Use - Stay Informed & Stay Alive

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The latest health news you probably didn't hear from the main street media.

CDC Says 5,000 Die Annually from Food

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, foodborne illness causes 76 million Americans to fall sick, 325,000 Americans to be hospitalized, and 5,000 Americans to die each year. Recent foodborne illness outbreaks linked to contaminated peanuts, cookie dough, and spinach – along with news coverage of illness and death from contaminated ground beef – highlight the inadequacies of our current food safety system.

FDA Approves New Suppliers to Ease Cancer Drug Shortages

By Linda A. Johnson | AP | February 21, 2012 

Federal regulators said Tuesday that they’ve approved new suppliers for two crucial cancer drugs, easing critical shortages — at least for the time being — that have left patients and parents frightened about missing life-saving treatments.

The news brings a light at the end of the tunnel for some patients, but not for thousands of others, given that there are currently 283 separate drugs in short supply or totally unavailable in this country.

Drug-Resistant Staph Linked to Animal Antibiotics

by Gretchen Goetz | Feb 21, 2012

A study published today in MiBio lends further weight to the growing theory that using animal antibiotics in livestock contributes to drug resistance among human bacteria.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is a strain of Staph that's resistant to methicillin - the drug most commonly used to treat Staph infections.

Using a detailed DNA mapping technique, researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Arizona were able to trace one of these superbugs - MRSA CC398 - to its origins, discovering that the human strain of this bacteria developed its drug resistance in animals rather than in people.

Often referred to as "pig-MRSA" or "livestock-associated MRSA," the strain is known to affect humans who have been exposed to live animals, such as farmers or veterinarians. But this study found that CC398 was originally a human bacteria, susceptible to antibiotics, before it spread to animals and then back to people. By the time it returned to humans it had picked up two souvenirs: resistance to methicillin and resistance to tetracycline - a drug often used to treat Staph infections in patients allergic to the penicillin class of antibiotics, which includes methicillin.

Because both tetracycline and penicillins are commonly administered to food animals, the study finds that it is likely that the use of these drugs in livestock gave this Staph bacteria the exposure it needed to develop resistance to these drugs.

In 2010, Tetracycline - used to promote growth and prevent the spread of disease - comprised over 42 percent of all antibiotics administered to food-producing animals in the United States. That year 12,328,520 pounds of the drug were given to animals, while just over 100,000 pounds of the drug are sold for human use. And while over 1.9 million pounds of penicillin were sold for animal use in 2010, approximately 1.5 million pounds are distributed for human use.

Both of these drugs are crucial for treating human Staph infections, says Dr. Lance Price, lead author of the study and Director of TGen's Center for Food Microbiology and Environmental Health.

"Methacyline's a really good antibiotic for treating these kinds of infections," he told Food Safety News in an interview. "But a substantial portion of the population is allergic to penicillin and they need alternative drugs like tetracycline. But 69% of the staph we see is resistant to tetracycline."

Price says that animal feeding operation provide the perfect setting for the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MRSA is easily transmitted in settings where factors it calls the "5 Cs" are present: crowding, frequent skin-to-skin contact, compromised skin (cuts or abrasions), contamination or lack of cleanliness.

"A CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) is the place where these 5 Cs are most prevalent," says Price. "And the single worst thing you could do is add antibiotics to that environment. It's the cocktail for creating superbugs."

Once these superbugs are created, there's no telling where they can go, Price says. While most cases of CC398 come from direct contact with livestock, some human cases cannot be traced to live animals, raising the question of where they came from. Other humans? Contaminated meat?

Several studies have shown MRSA to be prevalent on our meat and poultry. A study published in the Journal of Food Protection in October of last year found Staph bacteria in 29 percent of grocery store ground meats. And a study led by Price released earlier that year discovered Staph on almost one half of grocery store meats and poultry after putting samples in a bacteria enrichment broth to make Staph more detectable. Half of these contaminated meats were carrying a multi-drug resistant strain of Staph.

Price says the transmission of MRSA from meat to humans is an area that needs more research.

"There is definitely drug-resistant Staph in our food supply and probably in high concentrations. We still don't know whether it's a good route of exposure for people," he explains. "I think that's something we've really got to dedicate some research to."

For now though, Price says the upshot of his research is that antibiotics should be saved for treatment, not growth or prevention.

"We should be using antibiotics prudently, both in human antibiotics and animal production," he notes. "We should only be using them to treat infections - and it should be a last resort - because we're heading towards a time when our antibiotics won't work anymore, and we have to do everything we can to preserve the ones we have."

Timebomb of 'impossible to treat' diseases in UK as experts see a rise in antibiotic-resistant infections

Country could see 'massive' rise of drug-resistant bacteria

• Antibiotic-resistance medicine's equivalent of climate change

By Kerry Mcqueeney

A rise in antibiotic-resistant blood poisoning - caused by the E.coli bacteria - is posing such a huge risk that experts fear the country could be facing a timebomb of diseases that are impossible to treat.

The growth of antibiotic-resistance has become so serious that experts now say it is as much of a threat to global health as the emergence of new diseases such as Aids and pandemic flu.

It is now such a cause for concern that health professionals believe the issue has become the medicine world's equivalent to climate change, it has been reported.

On the rise: The E.coli bacteria is thought to be behind the massive increase in antibiotic-resistant blood poisoning

According to the Independent, Professor Peter Hawkey said common infections are threatening to turn into untreatable diseases by the 'slow but insidious growth' of resistant organisms.

The clinical microbiologist, and chair of the Government's antibiotic-resistance working group, told the Independent: 'It is a worldwide issue - there are no boundaries.

Antibiotics are no more effective in treating sinus infections than over-the-counter drugs, says study

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 12:51 PM on 16th February 2012

A new study will only add to the misery of millions suffering painful symptoms of sinus infection: antibiotics do little to alleviate the problem.

The study, published in the latest version of the Journal of the American Medical Association, adds weight to the long-held belief that GPs' willingness to prescribe antibiotics increased infections' resistance to drugs.

Researchers studied 166 patients suffering sinus infection and gave them all a week's supply of over-the-counter medication.

Bad news for sufferers: A study has found that a course of antibiotics does little to alleviate the painful symptoms of sinus infections

Half of the patients were also given a 10-day course of the antibiotic amoxicillin, while the other half were given a placebo.

The researchers checked whether symptoms - facial pain, cough, runny or blocked nose - showed any significant improvement between the two groups.

Patients were checked at predetermined intervals over four weeks.

 

Over-prescription: The study backs up the long-held belief that GPs are reducing the effectiveness of antibiotics by prescribing them for all kinds of ailments

The results of the study show that - a week into the study - there was a marginal change for the better in the antibiotic group.

But researchers ruled that there was little noticeable relief in symptoms - certainly not enough for antibiotics to be ruled any more effective than over-the-counter medicine.

It is an important result, as the research leaders say one in five antibiotic prescriptions in the U.S. are for sinus infections.

 

Sinus infection: Inflammation of the airways can lead to headache, facial pain, a cough and blocked nose

Study author Dr Jane Garbutt, a research associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, told WebMD: 'I think the data are something like 90 per cent of people that go to a doctor's office and receive this diagnosis will be given an antibiotic prescription.'

'I think that we should try and significantly reduce that percentage.'.

But doctors believe it would be too hasty to write off antibiotics, pointing to the fact that Dr Garbutt's study only focussed on amoxicillin, to which infections have a high resistance.

New York ear, nose and throat specialist Dr Linda Dahl said antibiotics such as Augmentin, Levaquin, and Biaxin could still be effective.

Her advice to patients suffering from sinus infection was to stick it out with over-the-counter decongestants for a week or two, adding: 'If you've been sick for two weeks and have been taking decongestants, it's probably not going to get better on its own.'

drug-resistance | February 20, 2012

Natural substances excellent choices to combat ‘superbugs’

Scott Johnson

Arem Holistic Health Examiner

The U.S. Centers for disease control considers the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance a major public health crisis and the Utah Department of Health has called the problem a significant threat to the citizens of Utah.

A number of factors are contributing to this mounting problem including the use of antibacterial hand soaps, the unnecessary prescribing of antibiotics for viral infections and the overuse of antibiotics in livestock to encourage faster growth.

By many accounts, the war between drugs and bacteria is being won by the bacteria. Bacteria adapt and grow stronger until some are resistant to most, if not all, available antibiotics. These formidable pathogens are frequently referred to as “superbugs.”

Fortunately, many natural antimicrobial substances exist that bacteria are not becoming resistant to. The difference between antibiotic drugs and natural antimicrobial agents is that the natural agents have hundreds – even thousands – of chemicals that the bacteria have to become resistant to. If the bacteria adapts to one chemical, another steps in its place to fight the bacteria.

In the February 6, 2012edition of the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, Danish researcher Jes Gitz Holler, Ph.D. discovered just such a natural substance in the Chilean avocado plant.

Specifically, the University of Copenhagen researcher found that this natural substance was effective against yellow staphylococci, or Staphylococcus aureus,when combined with tradiational antibiotic treatment.

Yellow staphylococci is the most common cause of wound infections that results from an operation. Skin infection is the most common outcome of a staphylococci infection, though if it enters the bloodstream or bones serious diseases may occur, such as pneumonia, endocarditis – a serious infection of one of the four heart valves – and osteomylitis – infection of the bones.

Resistant bacteria are able to expel antibiotics before the antibiotics can take effect through an efflux pump. Holler explains that the substance he identified inhibits this defense mechanism and allows the antibiotic to successfully destroy the bacteria.

Another group of natural substances known to exert potent antimicrobial effects is essential oils. In a 2001 study, published in the same journal, scientists tested the vapors of 14 essential oils against five common drug-resistant pathogens.

Of the fourteen essential oils tested, each showed antimicrobial activity, with cinnamon bark, lemongrass and thyme showing the greatest affect at the lowest dosage.

According to materials provided by the University of Copenhagen Holler states, "the drug industry is not pursuing research into new antibiotics. It is simply too expensive relative to possible earnings, and there is more money in drugs to treat chronic diseases such as diabetes. Therefore, the bacteria are winning the race -- resistance increases and treatment options are scarce. Research will have to find new paths and natural substances are one of them."

As drug manufacturers abandon antibiotic research for more lucrative drug markets, natural antimicrobial compounds will become more vital in the war on bacteria.

Many bacteria are growing more resistant to antibiotic drugs.

 Hepatitis C Now Kills More Americans Than HIV

February 20, 2012

By Steven ReinbergHealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Feb. 20 (HealthDay News) — Deaths from hepatitis C have increased steadily in the United States in recent years, in part because many people don’t know they have disease, a new government report says.

More Americans now die of hepatitis C than from HIV, the AIDS-causing virus, according to 1999-2007 data reviewed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And most of those dying are middle-aged.

“These data underscore the urgent need to address the health threat posed by chronic hepatitis B and C in the United States,” said investigator Dr. Scott Holmberg, chief of the Epidemiology and Surveillance Branch in CDC’s Division of Viral Hepatitis.

About 3.2 million Americans are infected with hepatitis C, a major cause of liver cancer and cirrhosis, the CDC authors said. An estimated one-half to three-quarters of infected adults are unaware they have the disease, which progresses slowly.

Hepatitis C is spread through injection drug use, from blood transfusions received before routine blood-screening began in 1992, and through sexual contact. In some cases, it passes from mothers to infants.

“Chronic hepatitis is a leading and preventable cause of premature death in the United States,” Holmberg said. “Over time, leaving viral hepatitis untreated can lead to costly care and treatments, and lifetime costs can total hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, early detection and intervention can be cost-effective and save lives.”

The new study highlights the need to increase hepatitis awareness and the critical importance of testing, Holmberg said. Screening will increase diagnoses and treatment, thereby reducing hepatitis-related deaths, he said.

The report is published in the Feb. 21 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Using death records from 1999 to 2007, researchers collected data on some 22 million Americans, looking for those who died from hepatitis B, C and HIV.

The investigators found deaths from hepatitis C surpassed deaths from HIV (15,000 from hepatitis C versus 13,000 from HIV). They also found that deaths from hepatitis C and B are mostly among the middle-aged.

“Seventy-three percent of hepatitis C deaths were reported among those 45 to 64 years old,” Holmberg said. “As the population living with hepatitis C in the United States — 66 percent of whom were born between 1945 and 1964 — has aged and entered a high-risk period of life for hepatitis C-related disease, deaths associated with hepatitis C have increased substantially.”

Vaccines exist for hepatitis B, but not for hepatitis C. If current trends continue, by 2030 deaths from hepatitis C are expected to reach 35,000 a year, researchers say.

According to Dr. Eugene Schiff, director of the Center for Liver Diseases at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, “the study is important because it documents and authenticates what we knew.” But, “what we need right now, particularly for hepatitis C, is routine screening,” noted Schiff, who was not involved with the study.

Dramatic changes are under way in the treatment of hepatitis C, he pointed out. Current treatment involves a cocktail of drugs, including antivirals and interferon, which many people cannot tolerate.

In about two years, interferon-free treatment will be available, Schiff said. This means higher cure rates with fewer side effects, which will make treatment tolerable by most patients, he explained.

“What’s going to happen is what happened with HIV — test and treat,” Schiff said. “Patients will be given an interferon-free regimen with cure rates approaching 100 percent,” he predicted.

Another study in the same journal issue found that the most up-to-date treatment for hepatitis C can cost $60,000, but may be cost-effective, according to Stanford University health policy researchers.

In a study led by Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert, an assistant professor of medicine at the School of Medicine, investigators developed a computer model to assess the cost-effectiveness of a new treatment for hepatitis C. Their model showed that for people with advanced disease the cost was justified in terms of results.

The treatment involves use of two drugs called protease inhibitors — boceprevir (brand name Victrelis) and telaprevir (brand name Incivek) — in addition to interferon and an antiviral.

While the new treatment is expensive and may cause side effects, it could reduce patients’ risks for cancer and liver transplants, thereby avoiding those costly events and possibly helping patients live longer, better lives, the researchers pointed out in a journal news release.

Yet another study in the journal recommends one-time screening of all those born between 1945 and 1965, instead of waiting until symptoms appear.

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Health Care in America - The Sword of Damocles - Antibiotics

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The Broken American Health Care System

Classics scholar Daniel Mendelson on the metaphor of the Sword of Damocles from the ancient Greek parable by Cicero:

"The real point of the story is very clearly a moral parable. It's not just, oh, something terrible is going to happen, but it's about realizing that what looks like an enviable life, a life of wealth, a life of power, a life of luxury is, in fact, fraught with anxiety, terror and possibly death."

What are Antibiotics?

Bacteria are everywhere, including on the skin and in the digestive system of humans. While bacteria are critical to normal bodily functions, some types can cause illness. In humans, antibiotics are used to treat health conditions caused by bacteria, including ear and skin infections, food poisoning, pneumonia, meningitis and other serious illnesses. Antibiotics are also used to treat or prevent infections that can complicate critical medical procedures including surgery, cancer therapy, and transplants.

Antibiotics belong to a category of drugs called "antimicrobials," and include penicillin, tetracycline, amoxicillin and many other formulations that can kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria without causing significant harm to the patient. Antibiotics were initially derived from natural compounds. Many organisms, including various types of fungi, produce substances that destroy bacteria and prevent infection.

Penicillin, perhaps the most famous of all antibiotic drugs, is derived from a common fungus called Penicillium. Many other fungi also produce antibiotic substances, which are now widely used to control diseases in human and animal populations. The discovery of antibiotics revolutionized health care worldwide.

Today, there are hundreds of antibiotics in use, most of which are synthetically produced.

What are Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria?

Just as immunization helps the human body fight disease by exposing the body to small amounts of a virus or bacteria, when bacteria are continually exposed to small amounts of antibiotics they can develop immunity to them. Over time this leads to the development of new, stronger strains of bacteria, with the antibiotic immunity passed on to subsequent generations.

It's a case of "survival of the fittest," with the strongest bacteria, that are least susceptible to a specific antibiotic, living on, adapting and multiplying. These are called "resistant bacteria" because they have adapted to the point where antibiotics can no longer kill them. As a result, some antibiotics have lost their effectiveness against specific infectious diseases. For example, certain strains of tuberculosis are now resistant to antibiotics that were previously effective in fighting them.

Another example is staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria that is the most common cause of staph infections, and that can cause pneumonia, meningitis, toxic shock, skin abscesses, heart valve infections and other serious and deadly medical conditions. In the United States, almost every strain of s. aureus is now resistant to the antibiotics oxacillin, penicillin and amoxicillin, and strains of the disease have begun developing resistance to newer drugs like methicillin and vancomycin. The threat of prolonged illness or death from an s. aureus infection has increased as it has become more resistant and fewer drugs are able to effectively control or eliminate it.

Antibiotic resistance has been accelerated by extreme overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals. Over-prescribing antibiotics for viral-caused conditions like the flu or common cold, against which antibiotics are useless, contributes to antibiotic resistance. As the American Academy of Pediatrics notes, "When antibiotics aren't used the right way, they can do more harm than good."

For example, children who are given antibiotics for ear infections are more likely to get another ear infection, sooner, than those who are not prescribed these drugs. In recent years the academy has urged its members to drastically reduce the antibiotic prescriptions they write.

Penicillin: the first miracle drug

Many of you are here only because penicillin saved your life, or the life of one of your parents or grandparents. Penicillin's ability to cure people of many once-fatal bacterial infections has saved so many lives that it is easy to understand why it was once called a "miracle drug".

Antibiotics are chemicals, effective at very low concentrations, created as part of the life process of one organism, which can kill or stop the growth of a disease-causing microbe--a germ.

In 1929, Alexander Fleming, a doctor and researcher at St. Mary's Hospital in London, England, published a paper on a chemical he called "penicillin", which he had isolated from from a mold, Penicillium notatum. Penicillin, Fleming wrote, had prevented the growth of a neighboring colony of germs in the same petri dish.

Dr. Fleming was never able to purify his samples of penicillin, but he became the first person to publish the news of its germ-killing power. Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley expanded on Fleming's work in 1938, at Oxford University. They and their staff developed methods for growing, extracting and purifying enough penicillin to prove its value as a drug.

World War II (1939-1945) had begun by the time their research was showing results. The main research and production was moved to the United States in 1941, to protect it from the bombs pounding England. Work began on how to grow the mold efficiently to make penicillin in the large quantities that would be needed for thousands of soldiers.

As the destruction of the war grew, so did interest in penicillin in laboratories, universities and drug companies on both sides of the Atlantic. The scientists knew they were in a race against death, because an infection was as likely to kill a wounded soldier as his wound.

Creating the right environment for growth was the first step in producing enough penicillin to be used as a drug. In Oxford, experiments showed that Penicillium notatum grew best in small shallow containers on a broth of nutrients. Penicillium need lots of air. In the United States, it was discovered that huge "deep fermentation" tanks could be used if sterilized air was pumped continually through the tanks.

Production increased even more when corn steep liquor, a thick, sticky by-product of corn processing, was added to the tanks. Corn steep liquor contained concentrated nutrients that increased the yield 12-20 times. Formerly considered a waste material, corn steep liquor became a crucial ingredient in the large-scale production of penicillin.

Scientists were also determined to find another strain of Penicillium that might grow better in the huge deep fermentation tanks. Army pilots sent back soil samples from all over the world to be tested for molds. Residents of Peoria, Illinois, were encouraged to bring moldy household objects to the local U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory, where penicillin research was being conducted. Laboratory staff members also kept an eye out for promising molds while grocery shopping or cleaning out their refrigerators.

In 1943, laboratory worker Mary Hunt brought in an ordinary supermarket cantaloupe infected with a mold that had "a pretty, golden look." This Penicillium species, Penicillium chrysogenum grew so well in a tank that it more than doubled the amount of penicillin produced.

The deep fermentation method, the use of corn steep liquor and the discovery of P. chrysogenum by Mary Hunt made the commercial production of penicillin possible. Researchers continued to find higher-yielding Penicillium molds, and also produced higher yielding strains by exposing molds to x-rays or ultraviolet light.

Penicillin kills by preventing some bacteria from forming new cell walls. One by one, the bacteria die because they cannot complete the process of division that produces two new "daughter" bacteria from a single "parent" bacterium. The new cell wall that needs to be made to separate the "daughters" is never formed.

Some bacteria are able to resist the action of antibiotic drugs, including penicillin. Antibiotic resistance occurs because not all bacteria of the same species are alike, just as people in your own family are not exactly alike. Eventually, the small differences among the bacteria often mean that some will be able to resist the attack of an antibiotic. If the sick person's own defenses can not kill off these resistant bacteria, they will multiply. This antibiotic-resistant form of a disease can re-infect the patient, or be passed on to another person.

Taking antibiotics for viral illnesses like colds can also cause antibiotic resistant bacteria to develop. Antibiotics have no effect on viruses, but it will kill off harmless and even the beneficial bacteria living in the patient's body. The surviving resistant bacteria, free from competition, will live and multiply and may eventually cause disease.

Patients with bacterial infections, who don't finish their antibiotic prescriptions completely, also allow resistant bacteria to develop. This happens because a small number of semi-resistant bacteria, which needed the full course of antibiotics to kill them, survive. Instead of being a small part of the bacteria causing an infection, the more resistant bacteria take over when sensitive bacteria are killed by the antibiotic.

Today, in the United States, deaths by infectious bacterial diseases are only one-twentieth of what they were in 1900, before any antibiotic chemicals had been discovered. The main causes of death today are what are referred to as "the diseases of old age": heart disease, kidney disease and cancer. We would be shocked to hear of someone dying from an infection that started in a scratch, but, before antibiotics like penicillin, it was common for people to die from such infections.

Humans can slow the creation of antibiotic resistant diseases by understanding the uses and limits of antibiotics. Take all of an antibiotic, and only take them when prescribed by a doctor. Research to develop new antibiotics to treat resistant bacteria continues, but research takes time. Time is running out because the world's biodiversity is decreasing--the source of half of our disease-fighting chemicals.

How antibiotics are used and abused

Perhaps you are wondering about the use -- and abuse -- of antibiotics in general. Let me give you an example. One of the most common diagnoses given at a doctor’s office is the upper respiratory infection (URI). It accounts for up to 70 percent of all antibiotics dispensed (Annals of Internal Medicine. American College of Physicians. American Society of Internal Medicine. March 20, 2001).

However, according to Dr. Carol Kauffman, most URIs are not caused by the bacteria that antibiotics are designed to fight. Rather, Kauffman says, they are caused by fungi. So, unless a secondary, bacterial infection presents itself -- and even then, the rules change -- most URIs do not require the use of antibiotics.

Regarding ear infections, in one study, children administered antibiotics for acute otitis media suffered double the rate of adverse effects compared to children in the study who took placebos (Clinical Evidence. 2000). The difference in outcome for those children in the study who took antibiotics compared to those who do not was almost negligible. Some scientists counter that children who take antibiotics run lower risks of secondary ear infections such as meningitis or mastoiditis (infection of the angular bone located behind your ear).

Of course, the landscape is complicated by noncompliance. The portion of people who take their antibiotics as prescribed has been estimated at anywhere between 8 to 68 percent. So it’s difficult to say just how effective antibiotics actually are.

Antibiotics in use today

Alexander Fleming, by the grace of God, brought us a mixed blessing in 1928 with his accidental discovery of penicillin produced by, of all things, a fungus. Medicine’s interest treating people for exposure to fungi dropped dramatically in succeeding years, until the microbes were only thought important insofar as their ability to produce increasingly diverse varieties of antibiotics.

Antibiotics and the Animal Industry

Industrial farms have been mixing antibiotics into livestock feed since 1946, when studies showed that the drugs cause animals to grow faster and put on weight more efficiently, increasing meat producers' profits. Today antibiotics are routinely fed to livestock, poultry, and fish on industrial farms to promote faster growth and to compensate for the unsanitary conditions in which they are raised.

Modern industrial farms are ideal breeding grounds for germs and disease. Animals live in close confinement, often standing or laying in their own filth, and under constant stress that inhibits their immune systems and makes them more prone to infection. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, as much as 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States is fed to healthy farm animals.

When drug-resistant bacteria develop at industrial livestock facilities, they can reach the human population through food, the environment (i.e., water, soil, and air), or by direct contact with animals (i.e., farmers and farm workers).

Industrial livestock operations produce an enormous amount of concentrated animal waste, over one billion tons annually—that is often laden with antibiotics, as well as antibiotic-resistant bacteria from the animals' intestines. It is estimated that as much as 80 to 90 percent of all antibiotics given to animals are not fully digested and eventually pass through the body and enter the environment, where they can encounter new bacteria and create additional resistant strains.

With huge quantities of manure routinely sprayed onto fields surrounding CAFOs, antibiotic resistant bacteria can leech into surface and ground water, contaminating drinking wells and endangering the health of people living close to large livestock facilities.

Antibiotic Resistance, Public Health and Public Policy

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a growing public health crisis because infections from resistant bacteria are increasingly difficult and expensive to treat. As of this writing, the U.S. Congress was considering legislation, staunchly opposed by industrial farm lobbyists, which would ban seven classes of antibiotics from use on factory farms and would restrict the use of other antibiotics. This is a response to the fact that modern industrial livestock operations threaten to increase the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Thousands of Americans die every year from drug-resistant infections. In addition, the National Academy of Sciences calculates that increased health care costs associated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria exceed $4 billion each year in the United States alone—a figure that reflects the price of pharmaceuticals and longer hospital stays, but does not account for lost workdays, lost productivity or human suffering.

Although everyone is at risk when antibiotics stop working, the threat is greatest for young children, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems, including cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, organ transplant patients and, in general, people whose health is compromised in some way.

The following excerpt is from an article by Carol R. Goforth.

The headlines are sensational enough that it wouldn’t be surprising to see them in the most notorious supermarket tabloids. The stories behind the headlines are scary enough that they might be the plot of a horror movie. Unfortunately, it is often the scientific press that is reporting on the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the threat to human health and life is very real and growing.

The increase in public awareness about the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has been occasioned by a significant increase in the number of reported cases of human illness associated with antibiotic resistance. Studies show that infectious disease mortality rates have risen nearly 60%, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimating that more than half of the infection-related deaths involve resistant bacteria.

Dubbed “super-bugs” in the popular press, multi-drug resistant bacteria are becoming more and more common. Newspapers and magazines carry stories of bacterial infections that do not respond to the antibiotics typically prescribed to control them. As one legal commentator observed, “many of the killer diseases of the past such as tuberculosis, typhoid fever, diphtheria, and pneumonia have returned to wreak havoc as bacteria are increasingly resistant to antibiotics.” While antibiotics were once regarded as an unending miracle of modern medicine, we are fast approaching a time when the miracle may come to an end.

While there are doubtless many factors contributing to the spread of multi-resistant bacteria, one factor appears to be the widespread addition of antibiotics to livestock feed. A wide range of antibiotics are currently added, in subtherapeutic amounts, to animal feeds. A growing volume of research suggests that this practice is having devastating and potentially irreversible effects on the viability of antibiotics as agents to effectively treat diseases in human beings, but the legal community appears to be lagging far behind scientific experts in calling for an end to this practice in the United States.

At the current time, there are three primary uses of antibiotics in animal agriculture: therapeutic, prophylactic (to prevent potential infection), and growth promotion (with both of the latter two categories being at subtherapeutic concentrations).

The use of antibiotics to ward off infections and to promote growth in livestock is not new. For more than 40 years many farmers have fed their animals a diet laced with small, subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics.

The discovery that antibiotics could be used for prevention of infection and growth promotion was serendipitous. Veterinarians began administering antibiotics to sick animals in an effort to determine whether the “miracle drugs” that were saving human lives could also help livestock.

These experiments led to the discovery that feeding animals small doses of the drugs not only inhibited diseases but also enhanced growth. This discovery led in turn to an agricultural revolution, with farmers—especially those in very large operations relying increasingly on subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics to keep their livestock healthy and to promote animal growth.

In the past three decades, agricultural use of antibiotics has increased exponentially. One article has estimated that in the past thirty years, farmers have increased their use of penicillin-type antibiotics in farm animals by 600% and their use of tetracycline by 1500%. Recent statistical research continues to show an increasing reliance on the routine use of antibiotics for pigs and cattle. Larger operations also continue to be more likely to use antibiotics, and many rely on additives for periods of time in excess of ninety days.

Part of the increase in antibiotic use is attributable to the declining effectiveness of the drugs as growth promoters. Over time, the amount of antibiotics needed to promote growth in farm animals has increased significantly. Some sources have suggested that “roughly 10 to 20 times the amount used four decades ago were required to produce the same level of growth in the 1990s.”

Moreover, even at concentrations approaching therapeutic levels, “the benefits of growth promotion are less now than those reported several decades ago.”

Antibiotic use and abuse

There has been an astonishing increase in the use of antibiotics in spite of the dangers of abuse.  In 1954 2 million pounds of antibodies were produced inn America, while today estimates of production exceed 50 million pounds.

Approximately 16 million pounds are used on humans, the remaining 34 million pounds are used on livestock in our food supply, most used as a food supplement.

Included in the list of antibiotics used as food additives in American agriculture are a number of drugs that are either themselves used as drug therapies for human patients or are closely related to such drugs. Amoxicillin, ampicillin, erythromycin, neomycin, penicillin, and tetracycline are all used to treat human illness as well as being used in animal agriculture.

US General Accounting Office Report - GAO-11-406

July 1, 2011

Infections that were once treatable have become more difficult to treat because of antibiotic resistance. Resistance occurs naturally but is accelerated by inappropriate antibiotic use in people, among other things.

Questions have been raised about whether agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have adequately assessed the effects of antibiotic use and disposal on resistance in humans.

GAO was asked to (1) describe federal efforts to quantify the amount of antibiotics produced, (2) evaluate HHS's monitoring of antibiotic use and efforts to promote appropriate use, (3) examine HHS's monitoring of antibiotic-resistant infections, and (4) describe federal efforts to monitor antibiotic disposal and antibiotics in the environment, and describe research on antibiotics in the development of resistance in the environment.

GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials, conducted a literature review, and analyzed antibiotic sales data.

Federal agencies do not routinely quantify the amount of antibiotics that are produced in the United States for human use. However, sales data can be used as an estimate of production, and these show that over 7 million pounds of antibiotics were sold for human use in 2009.

Most of the antibiotics that were sold have common characteristics, such as belonging to the same five antibiotic classes. The class of penicillins was the largest group of antibiotics sold for human use in 2009, representing about 45 percent of antibiotics sold. HHS performs limited monitoring of antibiotic use in humans and has implemented efforts to promote their appropriate use, but gaps in data on use will remain despite efforts to improve monitoring.

GAO did not address the millions of pounds of use on livestock including beef, pigs, fish and chicken nor the implications of transferring drug resistant bacteria from animals to humans since 1946.  Nor did it address the huge discrepancies in the amount of antibiotics produced by pharmaceutical companies.

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You are being killed and you don't even know it!

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Is that a jolt of reality you find difficult to comprehend?

Often the hardest thing to accept is the truth.  And the truth is you, me and everyone are being killed by the very institutions we created to protect us.

How can that be you may ask?  To understand you have to be aware of a few things.  First while there are benefits there may also be dangers when something looks too good to be true.  Take the development of antibodies in the middle of the 20th century.

Born out of a need to find a way to save soldiers from dying of their injuries from infection, this war initiative resulted in the discovery of penicillin which held out the promise of saving people from all kinds of health threats from war injury infections to the plague and flu.

Unfortunately we never realized the consequences.  The over prescription of antibodies for all kinds of illness, whether it helped or not, was widespread and led to the destruction of much of the human body immune system.  Fears over the consequence of over prescription and the evolution of new super diseases indicated all was not what we expected.

At the same time there was a new market for the drugs in animals, particularly those animals in our food supply.  With antibiotics animals could be brought together in feed lots or chicken barns and giving them antibiotics in their food would protect them from the spread of disease in the concentrated pens and barns.

Over time antibiotics combined with steroids proved to be a way to achieve much more weight gain and keeping the animals penned up kept them from exercise and losing the weight.  Just when the medical community started to realize that humans were being put in danger from the overuse of antibiotics and started to reduce the amount prescribed, they animal scientists were increasing the amount of antibiotics going into our food supply.

More cattle feed lots were built, bigger chicken barns housed over ten thousand hens in a confined space, pigs were limited to their own slop for a home and fish farms for restocking and then food supply became commonplace.  Today they all dominate their respective industry.

Fish Farm complex

Animals also now consume up to 60% of the world supply of antibiotics and the food we all eat is now saturated with human antibiotics fed to animals and then eaten by humans.  We got fatter cows but we also got new and far more dangerous strains of bacteria cycling the antibodies through our food supply.

The drug companies got a golden animal market for antibodies since they were starting to lose the human market because of side effects and long term damage done when human took the antibodies.  Every year more diseases become drug resistant and kill more humans.  In truth all cancer is a result of drug resistance to treatment.  Yet our government has not even banned the use of antibiotics in our food supply.

You can become informed and you can call or write your state and congressional representatives and demand they stop killing us.  Your choice.

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