Antibiotics

[Nick Armstrong]

Lark-rise sarnies, wonnit?

You're going to have to talk me through that one, Mr H...

[Alison]

So none of us have ever been to the doctor and been ever so slightly disappointed that

we weren't prescribed antibiotics ?

[Bryn]

So none of us have ever been to the doctor and been ever so slightly disappointed that

we weren't prescribed antibiotics ?

These days, if antibiotics were not prescribed I would assume they were not called for. I was damned glad that antivirals had been developed when I got shingles though.

[scottycelt]

I can vouch for such signs on rural Hampshire buses (Winchester to Hursley to be precise) in 1973.

If my boyhood recollections are at all accurate, it was a common if often-ignored sign on the upper-deck of Glasgow Corporation trams and buses as well ...

My constantly pipe-smoking Aberdeenshire grandfather (who lived till 93) greatly amused his grandchildren by occasionally spitting into a roaring coal fire in our lounge in the winter (maybe fortunately, I cannot quite recall where his phlegm ended up during the rest of the year).

What is beyond much doubt is that personal habits and practices were somewhat different in the good old days ...

[ahinton]

You're going to have to talk me through that one, Mr H...

#123 & #140 et seq.

[teamsaint]

So none of us have ever been to the doctor and been ever so slightly disappointed that

we weren't prescribed antibiotics ?

Honestly no, though I have been lucky enough to stay pretty well clear of the waiting room . I reckon I have twice been prescribed them when I shouldn't have been, (including once by a dentist) in recent years.

[Lateralthinking1]

If my boyhood recollections are at all accurate, it was a common if often-ignored sign on the upper-deck of Glasgow Corporation trams and buses as well ...

My constantly pipe-smoking Aberdeenshire grandfather (who lived till 93) greatly amused his grandchildren by occasionally spitting into a roaring coal fire in our lounge in the winter (maybe fortunately, I cannot quite recall where his phlegm ended up during the rest of the year).

What is beyond much doubt is that personal habits and practices were somewhat different in the good old days ...

Yes but "coughs and sneezes spread diseases - use a handkerchief". The 1940s! These days, the Government spends a fortune on commercials advising people to see a GP about a cough after a few days, frightening them into thinking it could be serious.

Six months of those, I think, on commercial radio and almost certainly a part of the anti-smoking agenda. While its objectives are no doubt well-intentioned, it has become absolutely obsessed with it so that everything else is ignored. Like prevention.

Having said as much, it is probably true that 99.99% who went to football or punk music events in the 1970s emerged from all the fashionable "gobbing" quite healthy. There is, I suppose, that thing in life about good and bad fortune, not to mention immunity.

Unquestionably it is a filthy habit. Really horrible. At the same time, I have listened to phone-in programmes for an hour where every caller, mainly 20-somethings, has been extremely heated about someone seen spitting in the street. Unprecedented!

But the average person has 10 sexual partners. That means many have 50. A certain irony there. Any individual's health assessments are based on his/her idea of the acceptably normal and the unacceptably disgusting. And they tend to be unreal.

[mangerton]

If my boyhood recollections are at all accurate, it was a common if often-ignored sign on the upper-deck of Glasgow Corporation trams and buses as well ...

Yes, I'm sure that would be right. There were similar signs in Edinburgh buses and in the buses in what is now called Inverclyde.

[french frank]

So none of us have ever been to the doctor and been ever so slightly disappointed that

we weren't prescribed antibiotics ?

Since I don't have to go out mingling with other people on a daily basis, I just stay at home, in bed if necessary, until I feel better.

[amateur51]

Since I don't have to go out mingling with other people on a daily basis, I just stay at home, in bed if necessary, until I feel better.

In part I think the issue becomes a problem because some employers don't recognise the GP's telling an employee to stay at home to get better as a valid response. They want to see paperwork and a bottle of pills is an added evidential bonus.

Of course some employees will swing the lead - but then again some employers dodge I mean evade :double doh: I mean avoid paying full taxes.

[ahinton]

In part I think the issue becomes a problem because some employers don't recognise the GP's telling an employee to stay at home to get better as a valid response. They want to see paperwork and a bottle of pills is an added evidential bonus.

Fair comment.

Of course some employees will swing the lead - but then again some employers dodge I mean evade :double doh: I mean avoid paying full taxes.

Now, now, ams! You know well that what some firms actually do is have their tax affairs rearranged in such a way as to reduce their tax liabilities to the barest minimum, usually by relocating their head offices that issue the invoices to countries with the most competitive rates of corporation tax (it's not quite that simple, I know, but that's a substantial part of it).

In order not to stray from the topic, I wonder how much tax reduction of that kind is achieved by pharmaceutical companies that manufacture antibiotics?...

[John Shelton]

These links may be useful; how accurate their description of a critical situation is I've no way of knowing. (I'd add the only GP Surgeries I've been in for years have displayed notices about non-prescription of antibiotics).

Losing antibiotics would be disastrous for humanity. It is estimated that antibiotics have saved over 80 million lives since the 1940s, so losing them (without having an adequate replacement) would lead to millions of deaths.

http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2010/08/the-ethics-of-prescribing-antibiotics/

Frankly, pharmaceutical companies as well as governments and the European Commission need to really get their act together," says Walsh, who has been urging co-ordinated efforts across the world to put in place good surveillance systems to find out what resistance is developing and where, and then look for interventions. He had Columbia, Mexico, Thailand and India all willingly on board for one surveillance scheme, but the European Commission would not fund it. "What we need is for somebody to give us something like €3m [£2.5m] a year. It's not a lot of money."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/12/the-end-of-antibiotics-health-infections

[Anna]

In part I think the issue becomes a problem because some employers don't recognise the GP's telling an employee to stay at home to get better as a valid response. They want to see paperwork and a bottle of pills is an added evidential bonus.

In my last job there was a pretty strict rule - if someone turned up with a real stinker of a cough and cold (not just a bit sniffly but a full-blown honking affair) then as long as the work could be redistributed they were sent home for 3 days (which is the amount of time you can be absentee through illness without a Doctor's note I think) To me this seemed so sensible in curbing infection to other employees who were grateful to be spared even if it meant more work for a couple of days. No-one is indispensible. However, this was not in a large organisation but a small country practice where we all pulled together.

[amateur51]

In my last job there was a pretty strict rule - if someone turned up with a real stinker of a cough and cold (not just a bit sniffly but a full-blown honking affair) then as long as the work could be redistributed they were sent home for 3 days (which is the amount of time you can be absentee through illness without a Doctor's note I think) To me this seemed so sensible in curbing infection to other employees who were grateful to be spared even if it meant more work for a couple of days. No-one is indispensible. However, this was not in a large organisation but a small country practice where we all pulled together.

Blimey!

I'm sure that Simon can expain all this, Anna

[MrGongGong]

I'm sure that Simon can expain all this, Anna

Though I suspect the "doc" has rumbled him which might account for his absence