The Frontline program, “The Trouble with Antibiotics” describes the agricultural use of antibiotics and how bacteria such as KPC, NDM1 and MRSA are becoming resistant to antibiotics used to treat human illness. According to the film, by far the largest user of antibiotics is not in the health industry, but the farming industry which raises animals for meat and eggs. The use of antibiotics in this industry promotes faster animal growth, and protects and protects herds and flocks against disease, which would spread rapidly in the crowded conditions employed in animal raising. Approximately 70% of global antibiotic use occurs on farms.
In the 1970s, the FDA began to speculate that antibiotic resistance was increasing due to the overuse of antibiotics such as tetracycline and penicillin and recommended that restrictions be placed on these antibiotics. However this was opposed by industry and lobby groups, and the FDA’s proposal failed. However research on this problem continued at other institutions and discovered a number of surprising facts. Tetracycline, an antibiotic which is not essential to humans, can actually increase the resistance of bacteria to cephalosporin, an antibiotic which is the only one that can be used to treat certain specific human infections.
Research has also found that occurrence of MRSA infections was almost 40 percent higher in populations located close to pig farms. Both of these discoveries have quite alarming impacts for human health, and the development of superbugs. Researchers in Flagstaff, Arizona are also investigating whether there is a link between bacteria found on raw chicken purchased in the local supermarket and an outbreak of antibiotic resistance in the local hospital.
The program also included a short film entitled “Outbreak at NIH” which told the story of an outbreak of KPC in the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland in 2011. The bacteria proved to be resistant to antibiotics but with the use of aggressive measures, the hospital believed it had the bug under control. However, eight months after this, nineteen-year-old Troy Stulen, who was recovering from a bone-marrow transplant, contracted the disease and eventually died from it, proving that superbugs can lurk hidden for long periods of time, and can produce devastating consequences for humans.
Obviously, one of the ways to combat the problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics is to reduce the use of antibiotics in the treatment of illness. Agriculture and farming use antibiotics more as a preventative than a curative measure, and by changing farming practices, and using antibiotics only when needed, bacterial resistance would be lowered, and the use of antibiotics to treat incidences of disease on farms would be more effective. This proposal may have an initial negative impact on producers, but would be more beneficial to human health in the long term.
Medical doctors have long been cautioned against the prescribing of antibiotics for illnesses such as the common cold or other instances where they are largely ineffective. In these cases, antibiotics had often been prescribed as a panacea for patients who urged the doctor to provide some cure and who felt slighted if they left a doctor’s surgery without a prescription for medication. A public education campaign regarding the correct use of antibiotics would benefit human health in that it would help to lower the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics.
Works Cited
The Trouble with Antibiotics. By R. Young. Frontline. 2014.
