Use of Antibiotics

I was oblivious to what antibiotic resistance was before starting this program. While I learned about antibiotic resistance in the field of medication prescription, it was only now that I learned about it in the field of agriculture. The first two articles introduced me to antibiotic resistance in farm animals. While antibiotics with good intentions such as disease prevention, it is most likely causing more harm than good. This is because the bacteria advance and evolve and are not killed off by antibiotics. We then need a higher dosage of the antibiotics for them to be effective. The process keeps repeating until the antibiotics are no longer effective.

In relation to antimicrobials, I was surprised to read about how they are used with good intention, but ultimately may be doing more harm than good much like antibiotics. One thing I think confuses a lot of people is that there is such a thing as good bacteria. Usually, when we think of bacteria, we see it as something bad, something that can make us sick. While that is true for some forms of bacteria, there are other forms of bacteria than are helpful. Like what Rob Dunn shares, we have our own defensive layer. I understand the logic behind the idea of antimicrobial wipes actually making people more sick since these can also kill the helpful bacteria on our skin. I think, like Ted Schettler mentions, that using antimicrobials also lends a hand in the rise of antibiotic resistance. While this means good bacteria can adapt to antibiotics and antimicrobials, it also means that bad bacteria can do the same.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 10, 2018 at 10:42 PM

    I also found it interesting to think that using antibiotics in our agriculture would affect us so much. Whenever I thought about antibiotic resistance, I though about someone taking antibiotics often which caused their resistance. I never though about us becoming resistant because of our food. Like you said, it is done with good intention but also kind of messes with our system.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownNovember 5, 2018 at 6:27 PM

    Antibiotic resistance is such a big thing! Many times we only examine this topic from the realm of prescriptions, but what if we considered the things we consume as to adding to the problem. It could largely shape the world of medicine!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Think About It - Website Exploration

There is a call for volunteers to support clinics in Daly City among other areas, as posted by the San Mateo Medical Center. As far as volunteering for disaster response teams, there is nothing on their website as of now. I was unable to look at the Disaster Healthcare Volunteers website since it was under maintenance, so I was unable to check if they have ways to provide healthcare training and experience to individuals who do not have them but show a willingness to volunteer. I think providing opportunities to educate and train more people to provide health care in emergency situations would be more beneficial than to wait for people with prior health care training and experience to come up and volunteer.
Read more

Occupational Safety and Health Organization

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has a public safety program that focuses on reducing or elimination injuries, illnesses, and deaths among public safety workers. Fire service, law enforcement, corrections, emergency medical service, and wildland fire service are all under this program. They cover many areas for public safety workers, which include 1) cancer, reproductive, cardiovascular and other chronic disease prevention, 2) immune, infectious and dermal disease prevention, 3) respiratory health, 4) traumatic injury prevention, and 5) health work design and well-being. One thing the site takes note of is that addressing these issues for one population is essentially addressing them for the entire community. Even though I am not a public safety worker, I can be certain that all the research going into making public safety workers safer and healthier will also be utilized to make me safer and healthier as well.
Read more

An Occupationally-Related Disease

Byssinosis or brown lung disease primarily affects workers in the cotton, hemp or flax industries. It causes asthma-like breathing difficulty and can lead to lung damage similar to that caused by irreversible chronic obstructive lung disease. In the 1960s, the disease was deemed nonexistent in the United States. It was not recognized by the scientific community in the United States until 1970. IT was after this point that the Occupational Safety and Health Act was developed to address byssinosis as well as other occupational diseases. The OSHA recognizes cotton dust as a hazard. As of now, the OSHA proposes having a cotton dust manual to solidify the policies and procedures to enforce the manufacturing operations. They also have a paper that talks about the effects of cotton dust exposure and lays down several options that can be used to reduce illness.
Read more