Animal Farms Are Pumping Up Superbugs

By Joseph Picard
Thursday, September 30, 2010 3:35 PM EDT
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/67393/20100930/infection-antibiotics.htm

The philosopher Frederick Nietzsche once famously said,
"That which does not kill me, makes me stronger."

That may or may not be true for human beings. It is
certainly true for bacteria. The superbugs are among us
and they are not leaving. Indeed, they are growing
stronger.

"The incidence of drug-resistant infections is a
national and global problem, in both the civilian and
military world, and has grown dramatically over the
past decade in civilian hospitals," said Rep. Vic
Snyder, D-AK, at a House subcommittee hearing Wednesday
on what the military is doing to deal with multi-drug
resistant organisms, aka superbugs.

The military, according to the military physicians who
testified to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations, has ramped up anti-
infection measures over the past few years in the areas
of prevention through standardized practices, detection
through screenings and surveillance, and control
through isolation, sanitization and the targeted use of
antibiotics.

The military has had some success.

"While considerable progress has been made in
controlling infection, the problem has not been
solved," Congressman Snyder said. "New outbreaks will
be a continuing challenge."

In July of this year, Dr. Stuart Levy, director of the
Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at
Tufts University School of Medicine, and a world-
renowned expert on superbugs, appeared before another
House subcommittee.

"We are not gaining ground in the struggle against
antibiotic resistance," Levy said. "All of us - you, me
and your constituents - are at ever greater risk of
contracting a resistant bacterial infection and even
one that is untreatable."

Levy explained to lawmakers "the paradoxical nature of
human engagement with antibiotics."

"On the one hand, these miraculous drugs are pillars of
modern medicine, helping us to manage and prevent
dangerous bacterial infections and save lives. On the
other hand, the widespread use - and misuse - of
antibiotic drugs has spawned the evolution of life-
threatening bacteria that render our current
antibiotics useless," he said.

While the military physicians in their testimony this
week, and the military branches in their efforts over
the past several years, concentrated on prevention and
control of superbugs, Levy took aim at the root cause
of the problem - the overuse and misuse of antibiotics.

"Some progress has been made in developing protocols
and encouraging more judicious use of antibiotics in
human medicine," Levy told lawmakers in July. "But
there has been precious little progress with regard to
stemming the spigot of antibiotics flowing into animal
agriculture."

Kathleen Young is the executive director of the
Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, a
worldwide organization founded by Levy.

"The problem is that the animal agriculture industry
makes massive use of low-dose antibiotics for growth
promotion and in place of effective infection
prevention methods," Young said, adding that the farm
animal population is much larger than the human
population.

The low-dose antibiotics do not kill the disease. They
make the disease stronger, more resistant to those and
other antibiotics. The animals - the cattle, pigs and
chickens - thus treated become superbug factories. The
diseases stay in them and they wash off them to infect
the surrounding environment.

"The diseases are not only spread around. The superbugs
propagate, making more superbugs," she said.

On the human side, antibiotics are still widely
misused, Young said.

"Often, the diagnostics used to determine what bacteria
is ailing a person are not precise," she said. "So the
doctor, out of convenience, will use a broad spectrum
antibiotic."

But a broad spectrum antibiotic - the popular Cipro,
for example -- may not kill the specific bug, making it
stronger.

Superbugs get into hospital settings, propagate and
spread. When a patient actually needs an antibiotic in,
say, a serious operation to stem infection, the
antibiotic may not work. The physician goes to another
type of antibiotic. That also may not work. The
superbug is resisting. Another type of antibiotic is
tried, if the patient is still alive for the trial.

Not only is there the threat to health and life, costs
rise as more antibiotics are used to lesser and lesser
effect, Young said.

Levy and Young say that the animal agriculture
industry, and the pharmaceutical industry that supplies
the antibiotics, have not responded to the outcry of
professionals to curb non-therapeutic antibiotic use.

"The solution requires a multi-dimensional, multi-
stakeholder approach," Young said. "The animal farming
industry and Big Pharma do not want to cooperate."

Levy pointed out that the Food and Drug Administration
has made plain to the animal farming industry that
their use of antibiotics for growth promotion is
dangerous to the public health. But FDA's guidance has
no clout, and .the industry ignores it.

"Agribusiness has fought efforts to curtail overuse of
antibiotics every step of the way," Levy said. "We've
given moral suasion, medical urgency, scientific study
and voluntary guidance its chance and the problem has
only grown worse. We can't wait any longer. Congress
must act."

Congress has at least begun to act. In July 2009, Rep.
Louise Slaughter, D-NY, introduced the Preservation of
Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, and the late
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-MA, sponsored the Senate version
of the bill.

Slaughter's bill would phase out the use of the seven
classes of medically significant antibiotics that are
currently approved for nontherapeutic use in animal
agriculture and, so people will better know what's in
their chicken and burgers and pork chops, require
producers of agricultural antibiotics to report the
quantity of drugs they sell and information on the
claimed purpose.

The bill is idle in a House committee. Young, however,
said there is still interest in the bill and has hope
that it will move in the future.

"Its provisions are similar to those of a law passed by
the European Union that bans antibiotics for food
animals and orders surveillance of the use of all
antibiotics," she said. "We need to move in that
direction."

_____________________________________________

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