Prophylactic Antibiotics and the Vreation of Superbugs and Antibiotic Resistant Diseases

2873 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Safety in meat packing industries

Prophylactic antibiotics are “using antibiotics to guard against or prevent the spread or occurrence of disease or infection.” This is a paradoxical façade presented to us by the majority of the medical world, the cattle and animal agriculture industry, and the fortune 500 companies (Prophylaxis). Prophylactic antibiotics kill tens of thousands of people every year; approximately 23,000 people from last year alone had prophylactic antibiotic related deaths, and are suspected to significantly help the progression of superbugs (Threat Report 2013). Superbugs, or antibiotic-resistant bacteria, are one of the very likely results of prophylactic antibiotics, superbugs are a quiet crisis that people of the world should be aware of, considering it could and will affect us if we don’t do anything to prevent them (Dennis and Vastag). There are many cheap and easy ways to prevent the creation of superbugs and to reduce the number of disease and contagion related deaths every year across the world. The most effective way to go about doing this is forbidding the use of prophylactic antibiotics in animal feed and only using them amongst humans after a major surgery or places where there have been recent outbreaks of MRSA or other similar contagions to it. This could not only potentially prevent thousands of deaths every year, but also increase and maintain our antibiotics strength, integrity, and effectiveness against known threatening or harmful bacteria. There are many alternative simple solutions to using prophylactic antibiotics on that would save money and lives, and if we do not choose to employ them carry them out soon, the problem at hand will become virtually impossible to stop and rapidly become a critical threat to everyone on the p...

... middle of paper ...

...ics use in Animal Agriculture: What Have We Learned and Where are We Going?” Animal Biotechnology. Vol. 17, Issue 2 (2006), P: 239-250. No Date. September 14 2013. Book.
Nahman, Corey. "Buying Antibiotics Without a Prescription Is Dangerous." Internet Drug News. October 8 2013. Web.
Silbergeld, Ellen K. and Walker, Polly. “What if Cipro Stopped Working?” The New York Times. November 3 2012. October 8 2013. Web.
Wadih Y. Matar, S. Mehdi Jafari, Camilo Restrepo, Matthew Austin, James J. Purtill, Javad Parviz. “Preventing Infection in Total Joint Arthroplasty.” The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. Part 92(Supplement_2), P: 36-46. December 2010. September 14 2013. Book.
Wetzstein, Cheryl. “Antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’ alarm health care industry.” The Washington Times. October 8 2013. Web.
“Chlamydia.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. January 3 2014. Web.

Show More
Related

  • Anti-Bacterial Resistant Superbugs

    1192 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is undeniable that the recent discovery of antibiotics and disinfectants in the past century is leading to the creation of increasingly dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Super bugs like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus have begun breaking out in hospital areas, killing more and more patients due to the lack of people following through with simple safety measures. In order to stop the creation and spread of antibiotic-resistant super bugs, proper precautions must be taken such as avoiding antibacterial cleaners, following through with instructions when taking prescriptions and maintaining adequate hand hygiene. Through adhering to basic safety rules, the creation and spread of super bugs can be minimized and all together discontinued from occurring at such a rapid rate.

    Read More

  • Fahrenheit 451: The Overuse Of Prescription Drugs In America

    1160 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to USA Today, U.S. doctors are prescribing enough antibiotics to give to 4 out of 5 Americans every year, an alarming pace that suggests they are being excruciatingly overused. In fact, Dr. Aunna Pourang from MD states, “to give you an idea of how high the pressure is to prescribe antibiotics, I didn’t get a job once because during the interview I told the lead physician that I only prescribe antibiotic prescriptions when they are warranted.” The development and widespread obsession of antibiotics, or drugs that kill bacteria and thereby reduce infection, has helped billions of people live longer, healthier lives. Unfortunately, the more we rely on and abuse antibiotics, the more bacteria develop resistance to them, which makes treating infections that much more challenging and leads to the growth of drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Research from the Center of Disease Control found that two million people in the United States become infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria, while 23,000 people die from such infections each year. Americans often aren’t informed on the power of the human body and rush to assumptions when perfection isn’t present. In a nutshell, the obsession of antibiotics is quite deadly and needs to be addressed before it’s too

    Read More

  • Antibiotic Resistance Case Study

    1099 Words  | 3 Pages

    Antibiotic resistance is one of the most important issues facing health care today, with wide reaching future implications if abuse continues. In the United States alone, antibiotic resistance is responsible for over two million illnesses and 23,000 deaths per year. Providers need to be judicious in the disbursement of these life saving pharmacological agents, while being informative of why antibiotics are not always the answer (Talkington, Cairns, Dolen, & Mothershed, 2014). In the case listed below, several issues need to be addressed including perception, knowledge deficit, and the caregiver’s role. This paper will focus on whether a prescription for antibiotics is appropriate and other courses of action that may be taken instead.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Omnivore's Dilemma

    791 Words  | 2 Pages

    Pollan’s words, “You are what what you eat eats, too”, got me thinking about how not only am I eating my food, but I am also eating what my food ate (Pollan 84). For example, when I eat a hamburger, I’m not only eating cow meat and bread, but I’m also eating what the cow ate, which is now mostly corn and antibiotics. When I first learned that cows are mainly eating corn and antibiotics, I was appalled. Though many may say that animals are being fed antibiotics to combat all sorts of disease, an article written by Sabrina Tavernise, who wrote for the New York Times, even states, “Farmers learned that antibiotics helped animals grow rapidly, and they began to add the drugs to feed and water, with no prescriptions or sign of sickness in the animals” (Tavernise 2014). The main reason for cows being fed all of these antibiotics isn’t simply because the animals are sick. Instead the animals are being fed these drugs because these drugs apparently help shorten the amount of time for animals to be sent to slaughter

    Read More

  • The Life Of A Peasant By Sarz Davis Analysis

    2053 Words  | 5 Pages

    Simple infections are no longer death sentences, however, immunities to these antibiotics are appearing. The use of antibiotics save lives by crippling the ability of bacteria to damage the human body, and antibodies act as a sidekick to the immune system when fighting off life-threatening illnesses. In “The Life of a Peasant”, William Stearns Davis (1922) focuses on what life would be like for the lowest tier of people in a feudalistic state, and he concluded that often in a world without antibiotics, people lose their lives to easily preventable medical conditions, regardless of whether they are a king or a peasant. Antibiotics are used to fight infections that could otherwise prove deadly. In a time before antibiotics, life was much more difficult for all involved. Before antibiotics were used, many died of simple cuts or scratches that later got infected. If action is not taken, superbugs could grow immune to all of the antibiotics we possess. Superbugs are becoming immune to the ways we fight them, which forecasts a world without the ability to fight these superbugs. In the article “Superbugs Causing Infections at a Tertiary Care Hospital and the Return of Pre-Antibiotic Era!” Kalyan Rajkumar (2016), associate professor of microbiology at King George 's Medical University, as well as his research team, discusses the prevalence of a strain of E. coli that is mostly immune to the majority of current

    Read More

  • Factory Farming in the U.S.

    624 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kaufman, M. (2000). Worries rise over effect of antibiotics in animal feed; Humans seen vulnerable to drug-resistant germs. Washington Post, p. A01. Retrieved from http://www.upc-online.org/000317wpost_animal_feed.html

    Read More

  • Antibiotics Essay

    1042 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The World Health Organization projects that as drug effectiveness decreases and antibiotic resistance increases, public education becomes more and more crucial” (476) Antibiotics were discovered in 1940 and since have been abused and misused. Between bad practices and lack of proper education antibiotic resistance has been allowed to occur. The only way to combat bacterial infections is with strong patient education and following the correct schedule in taking antibiotics.

    Read More

  • Antibiotics in meat

    565 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Misuse of antibiotics could result in selection for resistant bacteria”. This gentle warning mentioned by the inventor of antibiotics, Sir Alexander Fleming, seems to have lost its meaning over the course of years. Antimicrobial resistance is a growing public health concern; antibiotics used in factory farmed animals raised for human consumption contributes to this problem. Scientific evidence confirms that by the consumption of meat that contains antibiotic-resistant microbes, some antibiotic resistant bacteria are transferred from animals to humans ("GAO"). Factory farming has its benefits, but issues arise due to the overuse of antibiotics in factory-farmed animals, and this essay aims to propose a solution by analyzing Denmark’s successful antibiotic banning policies.

    Read More

  • Superbugs Essay

    2729 Words  | 6 Pages

    Resistance arises from mutations that are not under the control of humans, but the evolution of bacteria has been sped along by the overexposure of antibiotics to both people and animals. The number of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria in an area is closely related to the frequency that antibiotics that are prescribed (Todar, 2012). Patients often unnecessarily demand antibiotics to treat common colds or simple illnesses that are not caused by bacteria. Instead, these infections are caused by viruses which, unlike bacteria, are unaffected by antibiotics. Incorrect diagnosis can also lead patients to using unnecessary antibiotics, which can sometimes be even more dangerous than otherwise left untreated. Besides the fact that antibiotics kill off beneficial bacteria in the intestines, misuse of antibiotics provides an opportunity ...

    Read More

  • The Use of Antibiotics and Hormones in Animal Feed

    1024 Words  | 3 Pages

    However, health concerned organizations want to ban the use of these products due to the increasing fears that they can cause harm to the consumers. For over 50 years, antibiotics have been added to the food of animals such as poultry, cattle and pigs. The main purpose for doing so is to lower the risk of disease in animals. Farm animals are housed together in overcrowded areas, which are very dirty. The hygiene level can get to such a poor state that they are often in contact with their own excreta as well as excreta of the other animals they are housed with and because of tight single air space they share, the likelihood of catching diseases from one another is further increased and very often a whole heard can be infected at one time.

    Read More

  • The Evolution of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

    1427 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Evolution of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria. Since antibiotics, such as penicillin, became widely available in the 1940s, they have been called miracle drugs. They have been able to eliminate bacteria without significantly harming the other cells of the host. Now with each passing year, bacteria that are immune to antibiotics have become more and more common.

    Read More

  • The Overuse of Antibiotics

    3053 Words  | 7 Pages

    Thesis: With the advent of antibiotics in 1929 Fleming said, "The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops.Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant."With the overuse of antibiotics today we have seen this very idea come to be.Over usage is caused most prevalently by a lack of education on the part of the patient.Thus stated, the way to overcome such a circumstance is to educate, not only the patient but also the physician.

    Read More

  • The Discovery of Antibiotics by Alexander Fleming

    3182 Words  | 7 Pages

    ...gests that the world is on the brink of a post-antibiotic era as the numbers of resistant bacteria (superbugs) proliferate, and there is an increase in the number of people dying from previously treatable infections. Todar, (n.d) states, “Society could be faced with previously treatable diseases that have become again untreatable, as in the days before antibiotics were developed.”

    Read More

  • Antimicrobial Resistance In Agriculture

    622 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is estimated that over one-half of the antibiotics in the U.S. are used in food animal production. The overuse of antimicrobials in food animal production is an under-appreciated problem. In both human and veterinary medicine, the risk of developing resistance rises each time bacteria are exposed to antimicrobials. Resistance opens the door to treatment failure for even the most common pathogens and leads to an increasing number of infections. The mounting evidence of the relationship between antimicrobial use in animal husbandry and the increase in bacterial resistance in humans has prompted several reviews of agricultural practices by scientific authorities in a number of countries, including the US.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Antibiotic Resistance

    1336 Words  | 3 Pages

    The most effective way to combat pathogenic bacteria which invade the body is the use of antibiotics. Overexposure to antibiotics can easily lead to resistant strains of bacteria. Resistance is dangerous because bacteria can easily spread from person to person. Simple methods for preventing excessive bacterial spread are often overlooked. Not all preventative measures are even adequate. Doctors and patients often use antibiotics unnecessarily or incorrectly, leading to greater resistance. Antibiotics are used heavily in livestock and this excessive antibiotic use can create resistant bacteria and transfer them to humans. In order to reduce resistant bacteria,

    Read More

More about Prophylactic Antibiotics and the Vreation of Superbugs and Antibiotic Resistant Diseases

Open Document