Comment by smithkl42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smithkl42 | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who was surprised and kind of mystified by this sentence?

"You’d assume the lessening of antibiotics might be associated with improved health outcomes, especially since antibiotics are so overused."

It sounds more like something coming from Robert Kennedy, or one of those cranks who refuse to take antibiotics to treat strep throat, than from a mainstream researcher. Like, OF COURSE populations treated with antibiotics are going to do better in the period of a study like this. Under what plausible theory could you expect otherwise?

That's not to say that antiobiotics are an unmitigated good! I get that they have weird and complex downstream ramifications. It's just that those aren't the ramifications you'd expect to be able to measure from a study like this.

Ugh no. There is a difference between treating a diagnosed condition with antibiotics and just regularly giving all livestock consistent doses as a preventative.

Drugs aren't just "take it and everything will be improved regardless of the situation". Better to think of them as carefully used poison, good but only when used wisely.

The 1950s vibe of sterilizing everything needs to be done.

Livestock aren't given low level antibiotics as a prophylactic. They're given as an alternative to growth hormones. Antibiotic consumption gives you bigger cows.

That's the ugliest part of this whole thing. We aren't trying to keep animals safe, we are trying to keep the cost of hamburgers down even if it means people dying of incurable infections in hospitals.

>Livestock aren't given low level antibiotics as a prophylactic.

Yes they are. Sub-theraputic doses are used to increase weight gain, higher doses are also used as a prophylactic.

its the con of the working class. even in the richest country on the planet, most people have to consume sub-par-everything. from the food to the housing to the consumables, its all shit quality, on the cheap, on the dirty.

This is the success of the species, people highlight problems are not the ability to eat enough or even the choice of what's available to eat, but the environmental impact of food production. Truly a "first world problem".

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