How has the widespread use of antibiotics contributed to new health-care problems?
With the MISUSE of antibiotics (prescriptions written when there is no point, such as antibiotics for viral infections; people who do NOT take all their antibiotics, thus helping to culture drug-resistant strains of nasty things they share with the rest of us; excessive use of things like “antibacterial soap”) we have a lot of resistant strains of organisms out there. One that is really biting our behinds now is MRSA. “In Sack’s “Swabs in Hand, Hospital Cuts Deadly Infections,” 27 July 2007, New York Times, it was reported that the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) estimated seven years ago that the cost of treating infected patients in hospitals was around $5 billion. They now believe it’s close to $20 billion, with others stating it’s got to be more than $30 billion. The article focuses on MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) which appeared in the U.S. in 1968 and is resistant to many antibiotics. It can infect “surgical sites, the urinary tract, the bloodstream, and th
