People need stop using antibiotics for everything and use it only when necessary.
When Drugs Stop Working-Norway's Answer: http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-205_162-6014559.html
When Drugs Stop Working-Norway's Answer: http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-205_162-6014559.html
"The effectiveness of synercid, a drug of last resort for the treatment of vancomycin-resistant infections, is threatened because of the use of virginiamycin as a growth promoter in chickens and pigs in the United States. Virginiamycin is chemically related to synercid, and bacteria resistant to the one drug also appear to be resistant to the other." [2]
[1] http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/livestock/animalcare/amr...
[2] http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-...
If people were willing to pay for antibiotic-free meat, then farmers would produce it. They would call the vet, and maybe destroy the pig rather than treat it with antibiotics.
By the way, you're naively presuming they're using antibiotics when the pig gets sick. Nope, they're using them prophylactically.
In the meantime, I will keep buying antibiotic-free meats whenever I can.
That's a strawman fallacy [1].
> If people were willing to pay for antibiotic-free meat, then farmers would produce it.
Seeing as most farming in the United States is done on megafarms owned by large corporations [2] that have historically shown to be (to put it mildly) lax on their focus on serving healthy and nutritious products to their customers [3], and that "farmers" in the traditional colloquial sense are now only 2% of the population [4], you'll hopefully understand if I say that your statement has little relevance in the United States in 2013.
[1] https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman
[2] http://thecabin.net/stories/091001/wor_0910010048.shtml
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithfield_Foods#Environmental_...
> "We don't throw antibiotics at every person with a fever. We tell them to hang on, wait and see, and we give them a Tylenol to feel better," says Haug.
I wish more of us would follow this approach and learn to accept being 'sick' for a few days (or even a week) every now and then.
I know I am painting with a broad brush and with a sample of 30 or so acquaintances from both sides of the "pond" here, but it was my impression so far.
As usual, accusing huge groups of hypocrisy is not well-founded unless you can establish that the hypocritical attitudes really are held by the same people.
Also, I've noticed that some of my fellow Generation Y'ers have arrived at similar opinions by observing the issues that come with the over-medication of their parents/grand parents into old age. Doctors love to prescribe stuff, and sometimes the interactions between drugs is so bad that it can be pretty scary. Observing this as a third party can be enough to make you wary about over-using medication. It's also expensive and our health insurance situation over here is awful.
tl;dr, Yes, that's a huge generalization. I think a lot of younger Americans are starting to bend back the other way towards only medicating when necessary after seeing how much a can of worms it can be when used as a crutch.
We walked to the office without umbrellas, in light clothes, and hardly got wet. It was well over 20 degrees celsius, and a pleasant enough 15 minute walk despite the light drizzle.
We got into the office to find people in what looked like full survival mode, with raincoats, and hairdryers to get dry and warm. These were people who had driven right up to the office door.
When they saw us they were horrified and worried we'd get pneumonia and wondered how we could have chosen to walk 15 minutes through the "storm". Of course it did rain slightly more some other places - causing mud slides that closed a couple of roads and cut off the gas supply for a couple of days. But for us it was all terribly amusing.
After we went swimming in "only" something like 22 degrees in the water the following weekend, they got equally shocked (some of them asked if we'd used wet suits). I pointed out the coldest water I've been swimming in was 12 degrees, but I'm not sure they believed me.
I only take medicine (even supplements) if a medic convince me it is absolutely necessary, or if I have a issue that is unbearable (like so much pain that make me want to suicide)
People here think I am crazy. :(
We Westerners think we're individuals, and each of us are free to make our own decisions. We completely ignore the medical advice, and want the best treatment possible. We want to take the antibiotics. We want a biopsy of that lung nodule. We want an MRI for that persistent migraine. We want to decide whether our child receives "possibly dangerous" vaccines. Statistics be damned.
Unfortunately, with antibiotics on one end of the spectrum (we take too many), and vaccines on the other end (we don't take enough), herd management is the right answer (we should all be pretty much forced to do the medically-suggested thing), and we utterly reject that.
It's the tragedy of the immune system commons.
It's rather shocking that he's been allowed to keep practicing as long as he has.