Unlike the anti-vax debate, the pros and cons of antibiotics is much better established through scientific study.

Should we ban/limit their use in
1) agriculture
2) medicine
3) cosmetic products

The more antibiotics in the environment, the less and less effective they will become (it's called natural selection). We only have a limited number of choices and the number of bacteria that are resistant to all of them has increased slowly over time.
Should we really be using them for anything other than when absolutely necessary?
Should we be giving them to people who would otherwise recover on their own, only slower?
Should be really be using them to increase livestock yields (they make their way into the food supply)?
Should we really be proliferating anti-microbial soap which is anti-microbial due to antibiotics?

The anti-microbial products that works because they contain alcohol of some sort (like purel) are different.

Questions for thought.

Japan over-proscribes the fluff out of antibiotics here. Every single time I've ever been to the doc here(which Japanese people do incredibly frequently) I've been proscribed some.

But honestly, from what I've read, the biggest issue is the overuse in livestock feed. Same as a lot of greenhouse gas production and oil use in fertilizer. Eating massive amounts of meat is a huge contributing factor to global warming and environmental degradation.

I don't think there is much debate - we are actually losing the "arms race" with bacteria. That said, in many cases, anti-biotics are the most effective tool we have to fight them. Unfortunately, there is no choice but to use them.

There are a lot of researchers investigating better ways to fight bacteria. Recently there was an article in some high impact journal (name escapes me) that described anti-microbial proteins discovered through a relatively new screening technique. Many bacteria actually produce anti-microbial proteins themselves to fight each other off. However, one of the many problems with finding these proteins is that they are hard to grow! The new screening technique takes advantage of their more natural growing conditions to capture these hard to find bacteria/proteins. Another famous ancedotal to describe how hard it is to grow bacteria: the microbe responsible for something like 90% of stomach ulcers was discredited for years because of the inability to culture it in a petri dish. There was evidence showing the bacterial culture in people's stomachs but it was impossible to grow outside. Thus, the investigator drank an infected person's stomach 'juices' to show he would get stomach ulcers that resembled the cultures. Many years later, the bacteria was grown in a petri dish and it was named H. Pylori.




Finally, Tellarion continues to prove he is an idiot. Pro-scribe is not the same as pre-scribe. Idiot.

if tella wasn't so focused on abusing his mod powers and making life miserable for the posters of AT, he'd know the difference between proscribe and prescribe.


BOO TELLA BOOOOOOOOO

well we could go back to researching bacteriophages like they were pre-antibiotics..

some livestock do not use antibiotics. While the mortality is a bit higher it can be done.Most of the time there is a withdrawal period so not very much makes it into the food chain.the same with hormones only some of the livestock industry uses them

Oh goodness, I made a typo. What an idiot I am!!

I liked you better with your mouth shut. I wish I could proscribe you from speaking, but that would be an abuse of my mod powers. Wouldn't want to upset Trife's delicate mental state.

i'm never donating troops to you again!