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Comment by rwj | Hacker News Reader

The solution does not need to be that drastic. Stop using antibiotics as a placebo, stop using antibiotics in your household cleaning supplies, stop dosing livestock with antibiotics as a prophylactic, .... Part of the problem is that since antibiotics have been so beneficial we now over use them. This creates an environment saturated with antibiotics, which in turns drives evolution of resistance in bacteria.

(tldr; household cleaners with antibiotics mean that when you do get sick, it won't be something that can be cured)

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I think you're confusing antibiotics with antibacterials.

Using hand soap with triclosan has antibacterial properties, none of which contribute to antibiotic resistance. There are lots of reasons to quit using antibacterials in your house, and I have stopped, but contributing to the antibiotic resistance problem is not one of them.

True about household soaps and cleaners, but rwj has a point with, "stop dosing livestock with antibiotics as a prophylactic."

It's not even a prophylactic. Livestock grow larger, quicker on antibiotics. We're not entirely sure why, but it means more money, so it has to be good, right?

There actually is concern that triclosan resistance may confer resistance to other antimicrobials:

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/mdr.2006.12.83

(as far as I know, antibiotic and antibacterial are largely synonymous)

>(as far as I know, antibiotic and antibacterial are largely synonymous)

Not really.

Antimicrobial: an agent that kills bacteria or fungi.

Antibiotic: an agent that kills bacteria or fungi in the body.

This is a crucial distinction. Phenols have been around as antimicrobial disinfectants for over a century and a half, but you really don't want to take them internally. Whereas something like penicillin VK -- alas, no longer very useful due to widespread resistance -- is pretty much safe to take in large doses, unless an immune response arises.

We've got plenty of antimicrobial agents; what we're short on are ones that don't poison us along with the target organisms when we take them.

Yes, good point. Resistance to antibacterials might also be a problem, so their use in consumer goods is still problematic, but the distinction does undermine my tldr.

IIRC third world countries are large antibiotic abusers and they have no regulations in place to control for these things.

antibiotics... in household cleaning supplies?! I don't think antibiotics work like that. Source?

They're probably referring to Tricolsan, which does show up in hand soaps and other products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triclosan

http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_la...

Ok, I see how the use of Tricolsan could lead to bacterial resistance. But just to point out what jeremyt said above, Triclosan is definitely not an antibiotic. But the effect is the same.

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