What a fine bit of irony the National Public Radio website recently served: two articles, side by side in “Health.” One described the use of antibiotics on hog farms — antibiotics that enter the food supply, the soil, the water supply, and our bodies.
The other described antibiotic-resistant strains of tuberculosis, and pointed out that tuberculosis was the second largest disease-killer of adults in the world. It also affects a million children each year.
The first article may have contradicted itself when it suggested that there was only circumstantial evidence that antibiotics in the food supply were creating antibiotic-resistant germs, and then stated that a methicillin-resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus from pigs had been detected in farmers. That is perhaps a bit more than circumstantial.
I am a scientist, despite what a certain local politician might believe. I want decisions to be made based on facts.
Fact: bacteria evolve, and they evolve resistance to antibiotics. (Yes, evolve. Evolution is not “just a theory,” it’s fact.)
Fact: viruses mutate, and may become resistant to certain antivirals. (I do not say “evolve” because I think it’s a bit sticky to use that word about a thing that is little more than a clump of chemicals and which must hijack a living cell to propagate itself.)
Fact: in order to produce the amount of pork, chicken, and beef we demand and at a price we are willing to pay, farms for these meat animals have become factories. Animals are crowded closer than, well, than peas in a pod.
You know, don’t you, what happens in a day-care center when one child gets pinkeye? When one person in a college dorm gets meningitis? The disease often spreads.
Fact: In order to keep down disease in these “factory farms,” animals are given antibiotics. In some cases, these are the same antibiotics prescribed for — you got it! — people.
Fact: antibiotic-resistant diseases including tuberculosis and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are known to have evolved.
Fact: The problem is not limited to the United States, but exists in other countries. More than two-thirds of antibiotic-resistant disease cases are found in the BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Hypothesis: Antibiotics given to animals in factory farms, and which then enter humans, are one of the instruments of selection that led to the evolution of antibiotic-resistant diseases.
NPR reported, “In January 2013, the minister of health from each BRICS country … announced they would put together a framework and collaborate on projects to expand access to treatment for tuberculosis … Little progress has been made toward this goal.”
Facts: research, not meetings of ministers, is needed; MRSA and tuberculosis are only part of the problem.
Research to test my hypothesis would be a large effort. Further, I suspect (I fear) that in this country, anti-science, anti-intellectual, and anti-tax forces will ensure that the USA does not address the problem until too late.
Paul Lentz
Peachtree City, Ga.
