George Welch

The United Nations just declared antibiotic resistance “the greatest and most urgent global risk.” 

In my opinion people just don’t understand how devastating disease used to be, or how most modern medicine relies on antibiotics for surgery.

Somewhere around 50-60% of babies died before their first birthday, a huge percentage of women died giving birth to said children, and amputations were the norm for preventing infections from spreading (but you’d still get an infection from the amputation procedure and then you would die). The world before anti-biotics was insanely horrifying.

A lot of people act like antibiotic resistance will only be a problem in the distant future. No, it’s a problem now. Researchers at Idexx labs who work in the microbiology, have reported seeing a terrifying increase in multi drug resistant organisms in the few years they’ve worked. It’s an arms race and we are losing.

And it’s not just in the US, it’s all the other countries and emerging markets that have poor regulation. The US is already fairly decent at handling it (in humans). Far from perfect, but infinitely better than most non-first world countries.

It’s not only people stopping their prescription early. It’s the farms, the animals, the soap, the products, the emerging markets, lack of education and regulation, poor practices, etc..

There’s a lot to blame.

Blame countries that prescribe antibiotics for a stomach ache. Blame countries that have OTC antibiotics. Blame ineptitude and greed.

One of the scariest reports out there was from an actual doctor who worked at Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center, in Florida.

“I work ICU. I treat patients with MRSA, C diff, etc. If we find a superbug while they’re here, we use isolation precautions to keep from spreading their superbugs to other patients. They usually aren’t hospitalized due to the superbug, it’s just something they’ve got on top of it, and we caught it because we test everybody upon admit. We don’t cure their superbug. They go home with that infection, and are still contagious. 

After they are discharged, we use bleach and UV light to disinfect the room. They go home, and to the store, and to the movies, and everywhere else – and leave superbug germs for others to pick up.

You can pick up C diff anywhere. It can live forever unless it’s bleached. And it kills.

We can’t cure these superbugs. We can’t control their spread from person to person. Most of us, especially certain professions and locations, have MRSA in the nares. It sits up there, held in check by your immune system, waiting for the moment your immune system becomes occupied with something else and weakens on all fronts. It waits for you to pick your nose and then scratch a scab off your arm or leg, transmitting it to that new frontier.”