DOMESTIC
VANDERBILT POLITICAL REVIEW
A war worth winning
The pervasive overuse of antibiotics requires government action
F
ew discoveries have revolutionized
modern medicine more than antibiotics. A serendipitous discovery by
Scottish researcher Alexander Fleming in
1928, the first modern antibiotic, penicillin, played a major role in the first half of
the 20th century. Diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia that had previously
killed millions of people were now combated by a family of antibiotics that soon
followed the advent of penicillin. In 1968,
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. William Stewart
even went as far as to state, “It is time to
close the book on infectious diseases, and
declare the war against pestilence won.”
Dr. Stewart’s bold declaration certainly reflected society’s disbelief that
diseases that have slowly slipped out
of our vocabularies could once more
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by VIVEK SHAH ‘17
threaten us. However, the war against
pestilence is unique. Microbes evolve.
Antibiotics that work initially will inevitably stop working as bacteria develop
resistance. While undesirable, this precarious equilibrium is one society can
manage as long as new antibiotics are being developed. Unfortunately, this hasn’t
been the case. As the pipeline for antibiotic development has dried out, society is
faced with a burgeoning medical crisis.
According to the CDC, nearly 2 million Americans are afflicted by antibiotic
resistant infections each year, with nearly
23,000 of these infections resulting in
death. At the same time, Americans today
use more antibiotics than ever before, both
knowingly and unknowingly. FDA statistics suggest that Americans use nearly
7.7 million pounds of antibiotics, nearly
50% of which is considered unnecessarily
prescribed. While discouraging the use of
antibiotics in superfluous circumstances is
one part of the solution, much of the regulation must come from within hospitals
and improved doctor-patient information.
The greater problem in the United
States is the nearly 29.9 million pounds of
antibiotics used for meat and poultry production. This number is four times larger
than direct human consumption and goes
largely unregulated by the FDA. Although
legislation has been passed to curb antibiotic use to accelerate animal growth,
big agribusiness has circumvented these
restrictions under the guise of preventing
the spread of disease in overcrowded “factory farms” across the country. In addition