From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris) Subject: The *Really* Dangerous Drugs in Mexico: OTC Antibiotics (was: alternative medicine) Date: 29 May 1997 Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.drugs.psychedelics,rec.drugs.misc, rec.drugs.psychedelic,talk.politics.drugs,misc.health.alternative,sci.med, sci.med.nutrition,sci.med.pharmacy In <5mim0n$jgi$3@mark.ucdavis.edu> ez040018@dilbert.ucdavis.edu (Jonathan Fox) writes: >Brother John (nospam@burn.org) wrote: > >>But take heart. As the United States continues its slide toward a Third >>World economy and culture, doctors will eventually be parted from their >>most precious power: the power to prescribe. We won't be able to afford >>a doctor visit for every ache and sniffle. And pharmacists will once >>again be the first resort of sick people. > >Great. Then we can revert to the system Mexico has, where you can call up >your friendly neighborhood pharmacist, say you have had a cough for a few >months, and he will be happy to give you one antituberculous drug. Since >the standard of care for active tuberculosis is to start on at least FOUR >antituberculous drugs, they are just doing their part to help breed as >much antibiotic resistance as they can, while, naturally, many of their >immigrants bring it up to the U.S. where our Centers for Disease Control >can have a ball trying to track and quell the resistance. > >-- >Jonathan R. Fox School of Medicine >jrfox@ucdavis.edu University of California, Davis Yep. The legal drugs in Mexico are by far a greater threat to the U.S. and its way of life than the illegal ones. Our brilliant congress has yet to figure this out. Are we pressuring Mexico about OTC antibiotics? Dream on. Does our surgeon general say anything about this? Are you kidding? The truth is, however, that it's a hellavalot easier for your kids to just say "no" to cocaine, than it will be for them to just say no to multidrug resistant Pneumococcus, Staph aureus and T.B. Unfortunately, by the time this becomes apparent, it will largely be too late. Steve Harris, M.D. From: jrfox@no.spam.fastlane.net.no.spam (Jonathan R. Fox) Newsgroups: sci.med Subject: Re: question about antibiotic resistance Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 23:16:45 GMT On Tue, 20 Oct 1998 18:00:02 GMT, florence7212@my-dejanews.com wrote: >I recently took my son to the doctor and listened to the doctor's >now-standard spiel about how he doesn't like to prescribe antibiotics, but in >this case... The implication was that he was being browbeaten into doing it, >though I had not in fact said a word. > >Is it true, as we hear on the news, that overprescription of antibiotics to >pushy and insistent patients is the cause of the emergence of >antibiotic-resistant strains? I read a book a while back that described how >antiobiotics are available without prescription in other parts of the world, >which sounds like a more significant factor to me. As far as I know, no one has really proven who is to blame, if anyone in particular. We like to point fingers at community practitioners who prescribe useless antibiotics for viral infections, veterinarians who supplement animals' food with antibiotics, and hospitalists who overdo broad-spectrum coverage for immunocompromised patients. All of them may have their part. Differences in resistance patterns of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a common cause of ear infections, sinusitis, and pneumonia, in the United States compared to certain Scandinavian countries is quite profound, being much higher in the U.S. In some of these Scandinavian countries, routine care for ear infections is pain medications and decongestants, withholding antibiotics at first. Over 50% of ear infections will indeed spontaneously resolve without antibiotics, although the discomfort is prolonged and the risk of complications is greater. The difference in resistance patterns, though, would imply that outpatient use of antibiotics has something to do with S. pneumoniae resistance patterns. The Scandinavians may be on to something here, although in the United States few physicians would risk the lawsuit that would arise should he or she withhold antibiotics and the patient suffer a suppurative complication of an ear infection. It seems that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) were bred in hospitals. This is not to imply negligence on the part of hospitalists -- one has to balance the risk of emerging antibiotic resistance with the benefit of properly treating bacterial infections. Since bacterial infections will always happen, resistance will eventually arise even with the most prudent use of antibiotics. The problem is now that MRSA and VRE have spread into the community. I have seen several cases of previously healthy children who have never been hospitalized before come down with MRSA pneumonia. This is quite frightening, because we have essentially one drug to treat MRSA infection, which is vancomycin. Even more frightening is that strains of vancomycin-resistant Staph. aureus have been discovered. What can we do? Efforts are widespread to combat emerging resistance in both the outpatient and inpatient settings. Education is the key to controlling overuse of antibiotics in the outpatient setting. There are still some old-timers who give antibiotics for colds and poorly educated practitioners who doubt their ability to differentiate viral from bacterial infections, erring on the side of giving rather than withholding antibiotics. Furthermore, patients need to be aware of this problem and not expect antibiotics for any febrile illness. In the inpatient setting, some hospitals have developed or are developing committees that oversee the use of antibiotics, restricting certain ones unless approval is obtained. Hopefully infection control practices and the development of new antibiotics will keep us one step ahead of returning to the pre-antibiotic era. But we need a unified concerted effort. -- Jonathan R. Fox, M.D. From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com> Newsgroups: misc.kids.health,sci.med,uk.people.health Subject: Re: MMR--Panorama Tv transcript Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 16:30:15 -0700 Message-ID: <a6onid$hej$1@slb6.atl.mindspring.net> "Carol T" <cteasd5941@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:a6oceg$fdg$2@paris.btinternet.com... > > So you end up with less than 1/1000th of the concentration. > > > It doesn't matter to a few feverously multiplying bacteria cells how > much is going in, as long as they are getting the information they need > to become stronger. A common misconception. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria aren't "stronger". They're just resistant to that particular antibiotic. In all other respects they're weaker, because they're partly expending energy on whatever it is they need to do to protect themselves from the antibiotic (there are a whole raft of mechanisms, but they all take energy). Left to themselves with no antibiotic around, resistant bacteria lose their resistance over time. Why? It's adaptive. If it wasn't so, all bacteria would have long ago become resistant to all natural antibiotics, long before humans discovered how to use any of them. > It's also enticing bacteria that it would normally kill to utilise its > defence information so that they can wreak havoc at a later time, and it's > doing this at the time a child is also given major live viruses to fight. Wreaking hovoc? Sorry, the worst neomycin is going to do (even in much larger doses than this, and for much longer) is breed neomycin-resistant bacteria. Which would mean the child might be resistant to one of the three antibiotics in triple antibiotic salve, when next he cuts his widdle pinkie. Which is the only place he'll ever see that antibiotic again. I doubt that havoc will ensue. SBH From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com) Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american,sci.med,misc.education,rec.org.mensa Subject: Re: Social and Medicinal Parallelz... Date: 10 Dec 2003 14:38:51 -0800 Message-ID: <79cf0a8.0312101438.d770d2b@posting.google.com> makemyday@worldnet.att.net wrote in message news:<3FD73838.313B27CD@worldnet.att.net>... > http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-12/107103930585800.xml > *********************** exzerpt *********************************** > Overuse of antibiotics during the past half-century has allowed > mutant germs to survive and thrive, giving rise to increasingly > virulent and pathogenic bacteria that no longer respond to traditional > antibiotic therapy. > ******************************************************************* Use of antibiotics results in more antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, true enough, but it's a complete myth that these are any more intrinsically virulent or pathogenic than the non-resistant bacteria, in a non-antibiotic containing environment. If anything, they are intrinsically weaker, since they spend time and energy on matters having to do with antibiotic defense, which non-resistant bugs don't. That's WHY all bacteria aren't resistant to all natural antibiotics already. The worst that happens if bacteria become resistant to all antibiotics is that you're back to square one-- the kind of world which you'd have if antibiotics had never been invented. Or maybe it would be a little better than that, for reasons mentioned above. The idea that antibiotics create stronger or nastier bugs is nonsense. SBH From: David Rind <drind@caregroup.harvard.edu> Newsgroups: sci.med Subject: Re: Antibiotics Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 15:52:07 -0400 Message-ID: <batra7$ng$1@reader1.panix.com> Ryan wrote: > Why are doctors so strict about making you finish the course of antibiotics > he puts you on even if your symptoms are gone within a couple of days and > the course is for say.. 2 weeks? Probably for no very good reason most of the time. My impression is that this is a carry over from one of the few early studies of duration of antibiotics that, as best I recall, really did show that 10 days of penicillin for strep throat is needed to prevent the development of rheumatic fever. (I say "as best I recall" because this study predates Medline, and when I tried to track down the original article a number of years ago, I was unable to find it.) Although there is a potential concern about undertreating a serious infection and thus breeding resistance, this has little to do with, say, telling someone to take 2 full weeks of antibiotics for a superficial skin infection, rather than letting them stop a couple of days after the infection appears completely gone. I think if you pushed on the issue in most individual circumstances, people would be hard-pressed to come up with any actual data that a specific duration of antibiotic therapy is needed to treat a given minor infection without causing the development of antibiotic resistance. -- David Rind drind@caregroup.harvard.edu |
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