Antibiotic resistance ‘could kill humanity before climate breakdown does’
Antimicrobial resistance could soon kill at least 10 million people per year and wipe out humanity “before climate change does”, England’s chief medical officer has warned.
Professor Dame Sally Davies also cautioned the post-Brexit UK against importing meat or fish from countries that “misuse” antibiotics while rearing livestock. As Medical News Today previously reported:
On a global scale, the U.S. and China are the largest users of antibiotics for food production. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 80 percent of the total antibiotic use in the U.S. is in agriculture, with pigs and poultry receiving five to 10 times more antibiotics than cows and sheep.
Why are antibiotics used so widely in these animals, however? One answer comes from the demands of the meat industry, which place a strain on the animals’ health.
Antibiotics overuse in medicine and agriculture leads to bugs no longer responding to the drugs made to kill them.
If these antibiotics stop working, a minor infection such as a skin wound could prove fatal.
Read on...
It is essential we #keepantibioticsworking – everyone has a role to play. It’s really important to trust your doctor https://t.co/lBAvR7VLaq
— Prof Sally Davies (@CMO_England) October 25, 2017
Dame Sally, who leaves her post at the end of September after nine years, told Sky News: “We humans are doing it to ourselves, but it could kill us before climate change does.
“It is a very important area and we are under-investing in sorting it out.
“Antibiotics underpin modern medicine – you can’t have gut surgery, replacement hips, all sorts of surgery without risking infection.
“At least 10 million could die every year if we don’t get on top of this.”
Government data shows that, since 2014, the UK has cut the amount of antibiotics it uses by more than 7% and sales of antibiotics for use in food-producing animals has dropped by 40%.
But the number of drug-resistant bloodstream infections increased by 35% between 2013 and 2017.
Asked about post-Brexit trade deals, she told the broadcaster “there’s always a balance in a trade relationship between economics and standards”.
She also argued that the UK “should not be importing beef or other animals where antibiotics have been misused and growth promotion is a misuse, in my book, because it leads to problems across the world.”
Some strains of bugs including tuberculosis, MRSA and Clostridium difficile no longer respond to antibiotics that used to be effective against them.
There has also been a rise in so-called superbugs, which are resistant to not just one antibiotic but several or all of them.
Dame Sally will soon take up a role as special envoy on antimicrobial resistance.
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Sensible concerns indeed. However, wiping out humanity seems far fetched given that mankind was around long before sulphonamides and antibiotics were constructed.
Whilst the idea of humanity being wiped out seems quite appealing under the circumstances, it seems to me also that mankind survived for several hundred thousand years without antibiotics. Unless we have now become so dependent on them that we really cannot survive without.
Yes, humankind survived, but in small communities and they were hardier than we were. They also perished from things we can deal with: appendicitis etc. Wiping us out altogether may be an exaggeration, but drastic falls in population and urban life breaking down are probably realistic. Also, when the world was populated by small, scattered communities one could be wiped out and the rest untouched. Now we are interconnected which is very good news for deadly bacteria.
Perhaps our doctors are the main culprits has they give people five seven or tens days prescriptions when fourteen are a must to get patients back up to strength you see not giving these extra days saving them money and gov allowing em to pocket savings in medicine that alone gives antibiotics a less life to
This issue has been noticed for 20 years as a threat to the viability of antibiotics for us.
Nothing has seriously happened outside of the social fringe refusing to buy antibiotic meat. Will these people will be the hardy ones to survive?
I’ve heard said if the 3% out of the whole population who are the brains, and who have who have created our modern world die through disease in a world without effective antibiotics, we are done.
The Doomsday Clock reads 3 minutes before Midnight as well.
I very doubt if anything will be done to address these issues at all, and this article pits a fair spin onto our future.