Comment by af16090 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by af16090 | Hacker News Reader

The cover story for this past week's Economist was about antibiotic resistance: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21699115-evolution-pa...

And from that story, it talked about Colistin (the drug this patient's E. coli is resistant to): "Some of the antibiotics farmers use are those that doctors hold in reserve for the most difficult cases. Colistin is not much used in people because it can damage their kidneys, but it is a vital last line of defence against Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella and Enterobacter, two of which are specifically mentioned on the CDC watch list. Last year bacteria with plasmids bearing colistin-resistant genes were discovered, to general horror, in hospital patients in China. Agricultural use of colistin is thought to be the culprit."

Considering the same article says that "In America 70% of [antibiotics] sold end up in beasts and fowl" it seems that an easy thing to do would be to stop giving antibiotics to animals

It would be easy, if the agricultural industry was concerned about antibiotic resistance. Unfortunately, like most markets, externalities like that are hard to price in. If Farmer Bob takes the high road and stops using so many antibiotics, he'll lose some stock and get outcompeted by Farmer Bill. If the turkey farmers band together heroically and agree to reduce their use of antibiotics, uninformed consumers will choose chicken instead. And there's not enough governmental desire for them to regulate it - and local government would be outcompeted by imported goods that use antibiotics.

Well, that sounds like an excellent case for tariffs.

Yes, or free trade agreements that include high common standards.

It sounds like an excellent case for legislation to outright ban the use of human-safe antibiotics on animals.

Working antibiotics are among humanity's most precious and most limited natural resources. In a century they'll be gone, with devastating impact on routine medical care. We're living in the one glorious sliver of humanity's history that we have access to antibiotics, and we're squandering them to make meat a few cents/pound cheaper. It's criminally irresponsible toward future generations.

But meat is flourishing. Antibiotics are meat's way of making more meat. Call it the "selfish meat" theory.

70% of what is produced by pound, live stock do not receive on a regular basis 70% of the different antibiotics available.

eg. If all animals are given penicillin that does not explain why we see resistance to cipro.

Exactly. Agricultural antibiotics are often very different from the ones humans take. Yes, they might be in the same class as human antibiotics (which would explain resistance) but some aren't.

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