The article was blank so this is a random picture of chickens eating the special food. So the article starts off telling a story of a women in the E.R. She was in there to recover from a heart bypass when suddenly she had a respiratory failure. The doctors tried to help with an antibiotic but yet the bacteria of the infection was resistant. The doctors did not give up hope and gave her a new stronger antibiotic to try to stop this infection. The antibiotic failed because the bacteria was resistant to it. She died soon after. This is not the only case of this though. Many other times this has happened and more people have died. Right now people are fighting about how new drugs are used in this country. They want the farmers to stop using them. So right now they know that these antibiotics have caused many problems. The use of all these antibiotics are making the antibiotics for us not work as well as they were originally designed for. As we learned in class the more a bacteria gets used to an antibiotic the animals are fed the stronger it gets. So we will have super strains of these bacteria that are resistant to our antibiotics and the animals antibiotics. Then what the article talks about next is how these antibiotics are not used for the sick. Rather they are continually fed these things over and over again. The drug that was administered to this woman who died was called Synercid and was recently approved around March of 2000. While this was just approved a drug closely related to this is called Virginiamycin has been used since 1974. The bacteria that is resistant to this antibiotic has been found in almost 50% of all meat products in the super market. So many people consume this that a lot of people could be resistant to the antibiotic already. Now the FDA slowed down the use of this drug so the animals would not have it as much. Still the drug is in affect and some people are trying to get rid of it all together.
This is a very important issue and if you have people resistant to the "good" drugs then nothing will get done. I think the drug used in the animals is probably very bad for anyone to consume whether it be animals or humans. We obviously don't really need to use this drug as the only thing it really does is increase the growth of animals. It also prevents some bacteria from growing and cause diseases. It is good for the animals but they have to use it sparingly so things like this don't happen. So all in all this drug should not be used and we should immediately stop the production of it. In my opinion.
1. What do you think about this situation?
2. If you had a choice on whether or not this bacteria would be used, What would you do? Why?
3. If you were a farmer in this situation and religiously used this drug, What would you do?
4. Do you think it is a good thing that we get more production with this drug or not, Why?
I personally think this is a very important issue to raise awareness on; it seems rather frightening to think about. I mean, you think you may just catch this silly little cold then suddenly it turns out to be bacterial disease (not a virus, viruses already cannot be cured by antibiotics, antibiotics can only slow or ease them), which when antibiotics are used on it, doesn't work! Yikes! I agree that this issue needs to come to a halt by helping to stop reproducing and feeding drugs to animals (or even humans) who don't really need these drugs in the first place. Already we can see there have been some serious side effects from ignoring the ethics on drug consumption, with very few benefits. At this rate, things will just get worse, which is why America should create laws or put some kind of ban on all these sub-therapeutic antibiotic usage.
ReplyDeleteAll this talk of drugs reminds me of when I was a very little girl (about 3 or 4 years old.) Remember all those gummy bear vitamins that parents made their kids eat? Well, I was one of those kids, except, my tablets weren't nearly as kid-friendly, per say. Let me begin: When I was that young, I was a very, very, VERY picky eater! I rarely ate anything my parents ever cooked, and because of this, I was lacking in a lot of the important vitamins I really needed. For this reason, my doctor perscribed many different antibiotics for me, containing all the nutrients I was lacking. Each night before I went to bed my parents would always force me to take the pills with water. At the time I never understood what the point of the pills were, I was only 4 years old, and a stubborn one at that. It was just routine, so I never questioned what its purpose was, I just remember hating having to take those crappy tablets each night. When I was older (6 or 7 years old) I was allowed to switch to gummy bear vitamins, which I of course did. It's funny to look back on those kinds of things
4. I don't think it's a good thing we get more production with this drug, because more production means more feeding to the animals, more feeding to the animals means more potential for drug-resistant bacteria to arise and create more terrible situations like what happened to this poor woman.
i feel as if this drug is simply backfiring of farmers, and us as consumers. We use gmo's to improove plants, animals, etc. but this drug is only causing harm. If so many people get sick, the farmers could definatly sued, and many people could become seriously ill. So, basically this drug is pointless. stoping the use of the drug would not be that difficult because that is how we used to farm, so we are already used to it. i really dont see the point of this antibiotic if it is not helping us, only hurting.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of when we were talking in class about how scientists get so excited about something that they figure out but they dont look at the consequenses. obviously this seems like an excellent idea on the surface but once you dig deeper you realize how wrong, unhealthy, and unnatural that this is. I hope that they stop the use of this drug because i know i myself could verywell end up consuming it, without even reaizing what it is.
2. if i had a choice, i think that it would be a clear no to this bacteria. because again it is pointless and harmful. If you got some medicine that said on the bottle that the side effects were : death, disease, and bacteria overtaking you body with no cure., im pretty positive you would not want to use that certain drug. I find it hard to believe that the people eating the food want to be eating this "super bacteria"
This is again, ridiculous and absurd. Even though we're consuming it indirectly, the antibiotics are still going to affect us. This will happen no matter how much or how often the live stock are being fed the antibiotics. The genetically modified plants and animals are created to help their species as well as ours. However the see-saw isn't balanced because we're the only ones benefiting from the antibiotics, and that's being generous with the number of deaths that have occurred from the long-term effects of the antibiotics.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me off the food chains we made during the beginning of the second semester. We had to show what species/populations would be affected if another species/populations had a disease or if a species/population over-bred. For instance, if the rabbits over populated, the grass levels would decrease greatly, but the snakes and hawks would grow to match the levels of the rabbits.
1. What is being done now to prevent the factory farmers to over-use the antibiotics again? What precautionary plans have been set?
2. Could the use of the antibiotics also be effecting the average human weight? Could it possibly lead to more obesity since its increasing the weight of the live stock?
3. Why didn't anyone think beyond the positive out comes of this product? After all, there are often negatives to the positives in life.