FOR ALL the breakthroughs medicine has achieved in treating cancer and heart disease, none has saved as many lives as the last century's discovery of antibiotics to treat infectious diseases. That is why physicians are so concerned about the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Congress now has an opportunity to limit one cause of resistance: the overuse of antibiotics in poultry and livestock.
Farmers use the drugs not just to treat sick animals, but on a much wider scale to prevent diseases in the first place and, worst of all, to help speed up the fattening of livestock. Inevitably, this leads to breeding bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. There is recent evidence that farmers' use of antibiotics might be a factor in the spread of a particularly lethal bug, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MRSA killed more Americans than AIDS in 2005. For the most part, MRSA is spread within hospitals and nursing homes, though there have also been outbreaks in prisons, schools, and on sports teams. A recent study by University of Iowa researchers confirmed what Canadian and European scientists had discovered: the existence of the same MRSA strain among pigs and the farm workers tending the animals.
Advocates of preserving the value of antibiotics to fight diseases in human beings want the federal government to play a more active role investigating and, if necessary, policing this problem. To achieve this, they are trying to attach a provision to a "must-pass" bill that reauthorizes the Food and Drug Administration to collect fees from industry for the approval of veterinary medicines. The provision would require that some of the revenues go toward examining the effects of drug use in animals.
Congress should have long since passed a bill sponsored by Senator Edward Kennedy that would phase out altogether the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animals. Short of that, the change proposed by the advocates to the fee-reauthorization bill would at least force the FDA to begin addressing this problem.
Veterinary use of antibiotics is just one cause of resistance. Physicians frequently prescribe them for the wrong conditions, and patients are often negligent by not using a full course of the drugs. But ending the misuse of antibiotics on farms is a step that can be readily achieved. According to the American Academy of Science, it would add $5 to $10 to the average American's annual meat bill. That's a sound investment in keeping the miracle of miracle drugs alive.Boston Globe
