Antibiotics

[Guest]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20354536

Despite our differences over so many things, I think that we might as a group be able to have some small impact in society as regards those things we all believe to be right.

The subject covered by the brief article above is, I'm sure, one such. If we all refuse antibiotics unless we really need them, and if we all explain to two other people at some point during, say, the next year, how dangerous it is not to complete courses and also to take them unnecssarily, then maybe it will have a tiny impact.

My current GP - who is kind-natured but for whose diagnostic and prescriptive abilities, I, along with many others, don't have much time - is a big fan of giving them out like sweets, and on at least two occasions over the past 10 years I've managed to recover from things well enough without them, despite her urging. I was happy to take them when I got a bad infection in my arm that wasn't clearing up, though, which from my own reading around the subject I think is fair enough.

Don't forget, also, that many non-organic and/or factory farmed items, especially cheap poultry and eggs, contain traces of antibiotics, which can build up over the years in one's system. (Avoid factory poultry if you can anyway, for all kinds of reasons.)

[richardfinegold]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20354536

Despite our differences over so many things, I think that we might as a group be able to have some small impact in society as regards those things we all believe to be right.

The subject covered by the brief article above is, I'm sure, one such. If we all refuse antibiotics unless we really need them, and if we all explain to two other people at some point during, say, the next year, how dangerous it is not to complete courses and also to take them unnecssarily, then maybe it will have a tiny impact.

My current GP - who is kind-natured but for whose diagnostic and prescriptive abilities, I, along with many others, don't have much time - is a big fan of giving them out like sweets, and on at least two occasions over the past 10 years I've managed to recover from things well enough without them, despite her urging. I was happy to take them when I got a bad infection in my arm that wasn't clearing up, though, which from my own reading around the subject I think is fair enough.

Don't forget, also, that many non-organic and/or factory farmed items, especially cheap poultry and eggs, contain traces of antibiotics, which can build up over the years in one's system. (Avoid factory poultry if you can anyway, for all kinds of reasons.)

I'm a primary Care physician. You wouldn't believe how many patients want antbiotics for what are clearly viral infections. They won't be happy unless they get them, and if I don't prescribe them will go to an urgent care center or an emergency room.
In the future I suggest that you tell your G.P. that you are willing to suffer a viral illness and are not one of the antibiotic seekers. People like you are the exception, not the rule. On the other hand, if you have what is probably a viral illness, why the heck are you bothering your G.P.? as Physicians, we assume that most people who know that they have a cold and that we can't do much about it don't bother us in the first place, and that the people who show up in our office
probably are the ones who won't be satisfied until they get a prescription. So next time, stay home until you are near death.

[John Shelton]

Antibiotics would have been entirely beyond the point, but two weeks ago I came close to at the least a very serious illness indeed. I'm still weak but a corner has been turned . Many thanks in part though not completely (she's not a miracle worker) to my GP.

I'm sorry, Simon, but any serious point you make is vitiated by remarks like -

My current GP - who is kind-natured but for whose diagnostic and prescriptive abilities, I, along with many others, don't have much time

- your current GP can't, of course, answer back. It's that insidious nastiness, embodied in your sentence, that will end my participation on these boards.

[kernelbogey]

[...]your current GP can't, of course, answer back. It's that insidious nastiness, embodied in your sentence, that will end my participation on these boards...

...and which deters me from engaging in any thread you, Simon, start, or, indeed, to which you contribute.

kb

[Dave2002]

Hey Non
Another one going? Pity. I didn't find Simon's comments too offensive on this occasion, but even if you found them more so I wouldn't have thought it worth worrying about. Nobody is forcing you to read or to contribute to threads he initiates. I hope you don't go just because of one or two posts which you don't like.

Now what I find puzzling is why he goes to a GP whose capabilities he appears to doubt, and has done for a long time. Perhaps she has other qualitities he does appreciate, else why continue?

[John Shelton]

I think kb has made my mind up for me.

If Simon had wished to raise the issue of over use of antibiotics, that's fine. But a person who can't answer back has to be introduced in the thread - his GP.

kb: I've contributed widely on musical subjects here - perhaps you've missed them? I have always at least attempted to bring such knowledge as I have to whatever the subject is.

I shall e mail ff requesting removal from this MB. I wish it all success in future.

[kernelbogey]

Hey Nonymous ~

Whoops! I was referring to Simon, not you!

My apologies for not being clear. I'm sorry you've decided to leave. One can just avoid the posts of those one distrusts.

I hope you'll reconsider your decision to leave.

Best wishes
kb

[Dave2002]

Hey Non

Whatever you decide, I hope your health continues to improve. Sounds as though you had a rough time recently.

Keep well.

Best wishes.

D.

[John Shelton]

I'm sorry kb - as I keep droning on I've been very sick. I shouldn't have posted last night. I'll e mail ff

And thank you for the prompt clarification

[John Shelton]

Hey Non

Whatever you decide, I hope your health continues to improve. Sounds as though you had a rough time recently.

Keep well.

Best wishes.

D.

Thanks Dave. That's most kind .

[salymap]

Thanks Dave. That's most kind .

Morning Hey Non, why not stay with the MBs but give yourself a break from them until you feel better, which I hope is soon. saly

[John Shelton]

Thanks sal I'll check in to the musical threads from time to time. Steer clear of controversy!

[Pabmusic]

Wow! I'll think I'll contribute to this thread on the subject as Simon introduced it.

This is the most tragic example of the need to teach evolution more widely (particularly in th USA - we're quite good in Europe, though it could be a lot better). The biggest problen we encounter in trying to understand evolution is time - it takes so very many generations to notice appreciable differences. If we could travel backwards in time, we would not notice any appreciable difference in humans for perhaps 100,000 years (say 4,000 generations) - and then it would only be small things, such as a thickening of brow ridges. But bacteria have very short generation times - hours, even minutes; E.coli is 17 minutes - so that 4,000 generations for E.coli is about 19 hours. This means that there have been some 2.2 million generations of E.coli since 1940, when penicillin became commercially available. That is plenty enough time for natural selection to produce varieties that are resistant to penicillin (much more than was needed, actually, because penicillin was effectively useless for most things by the early 1960s, though I understand it is still prescribed for scarlet fever).

Natural selection is so easy to understand, that it's amazing we don't all have a grasp of it as we do - say - gravity. Even many doctors don't appreciate quite how it works, with the result that over-prescription and adding antibiotics to animal feed have ensured that we have bred resistant strains much earlier than we need have done. Darwin and Wallace explained this in 1851, and the basics are unchanged now,and we have understood the mechanism for it since the 1930s, when Mendel's work on genetics was accepted as part of Neo-Darwinism. And this was before penicillin was marketed. Such a shame.

[Resurrection Man]

Pabmusic..I am sure that your point re evolution and putting antibiotics in animal feed will have some effect although my own personal viewpoint is that this is probably minimal. To my mind, this is the key reason as eloquently pointed out by Richardfinegould...

You wouldn't believe how many patients want antbiotics for what are clearly viral infections. They won't be happy unless they get them, and if I don't prescribe them will go to an urgent care center or an emergency room.

And to compound matters, the same idiot patients that demand the antibiotics despite being told that they will have absolutely no effect on a viral infection like a common cold then stop taking them for the full course of treatment when they are prescribed antibiotics for some bacterial infection for which they were designed.

I keep coming back to the film Idiocracy which I found deeply unsettling and profoundly depressing.

[teamsaint]

Doctors also prescribe antibiotics wrongly. They have the control.
And drug companies don't invest in new antibiotics because they don't make as much money as drugs for chronic conditions.

3 areas of concern here.