This isn’t news. The alarm bells have been clanging away for decades. One of the scariest, is drug-resistant TB. I understand there’s also drug-resistant leprosy, but that doesn’t transmit easily.
I’m old enough to remember that penicillin cured almost everything. You started a 10-day course, and felt better in a day and a half.
The problem was that many folks stopped taking it, when they felt better.
These days, American meat is absolutely overflowing with antibiotics. I don’t know if there’s any kind of serious effort to address that.
> The problem was that many folks stopped taking it, when they felt better.
This really wasn't the problem. There was never any strong science behind it, other than just an abundance of caution. But you can also argue that taking antibiotics for an extra week is bad because it prolongs the evolutionary pressure on microbes to develop resistance.
Either way, stuff like that is inconsequential. Most drug-resistant strains crop up in hospice and hospital settings where immunocompromised or gravely ill patients are kept on a cocktail of antibiotics for months or years, and resistant bacteria have a significant advantage and can spread easily.
And it's not like we have a good alternative to that - "let more people die earlier" is not an easy sell.
This is possibly followed by overuse of antibiotics in animal husbandry, although that part is more complicated than usually implied.
Humans, as a rule, do not take antibiotics every day of every year.
Factory Farms do feed animals low doses of antibiotics constantly because doing so makes farm animals more efficient at converting animal feed into tasty, tasty meat.
We aren't talking about giving injured or sick animals or people antibiotics until they are well, we are talking about creating conditions on huge factory farms where bacteria can only survive and thrive if they evolve the ability to shrug off the constant presence of antibiotics.
Unfortunately, bacteria also are able to trade those antibiotic resistance genes from one strain to another, so new antibiotic resistance genes can get transferred to bacteria like tuberculosis that are already a problem without learning new genetic tricks.
Look up the percentage of antibiotics by weight that are used on farms vs. those given to people.
> Of all antibiotics sold in the United States, approximately 80% are sold for use in animal agriculture; about 70% of these are “medically important” (i.e., from classes important to human medicine). Antibiotics are administered to animals in feed to marginally improve growth rates
Where the logic made no sense was optional repeats. I would get told "here is one course, if you dont feel better, you can take this script for the second". So after five days you finish the first and if you feel better its fine to stop. But if you take one pill from course 2, well you better finish it or you'll be breeding resistance.
The overuse of antibiotics in agriculture is especially maddening. It's one of the clearest, most preventable drivers of resistance, and yet regulation is patchy at best
“Less than 0.5% of all meat samples tested in 2018 contained
detectable antibiotics (U.S. Residue Program). Farmers, processors, and regulatory agencies work together to get this number to zero.”
Please challenge the thoughts you carry around. Sometimes it’s isn’t so.
Perhaps they meant to suggest that factory farms are overusing antibiotics, rather than the antibiotics remain in the meat we consume?
Anecdotally, I’ve heard plenty of concern (from the public) that the latter could breed resistant bacteria, but never even heard of your interpretation as a concern.
Sounds like the overuse of antibiotics in animals we slaughter was noted and regulated against, according to the document you linked:
> Did you know? As of January 1, 2017, Federal guidelines require a veterinarian to write the prescription or order when
antibiotics important to human health will be used in feed or water
of livestock and poultry. Why is this important? As in health care, professionals in veterinary medicine must identify where antibiotic use practices can be
improved. Eliminating unnecessary antibiotic use is an important part of
antibiotic stewardship.
Anyway, I took GP's comment to refer to the overuse of antibiotics in animals we slaughter and not the amount of antibiotics still detectable in the meat. As of 2015 at least that was still a problem and had an impact on resistant bacteria.
> Of all antibiotics sold in the United States, approximately 80% are sold for use in animal agriculture; about 70% of these are “medically important” (i.e., from classes important to human medicine).2 Antibiotics are administered to animals in feed to marginally improve growth rates and to prevent infections, a practice projected to increase dramatically worldwide over the next 15 years.3 There is growing evidence that antibiotic resistance in humans is promoted by the widespread use of nontherapeutic antibiotics in animals. Resistant bacteria are transmitted to humans through direct contact with animals, by exposure to animal manure, through consumption of undercooked meat, and through contact with uncooked meat or surfaces meat has touched.
There's a pretty simple solution to the lack of new antibiotics that I've never seen anyone suggest: up the amount of time that any new antibiotics are patented.
Right now there's not much of an incentive to create new antibiotics. It's quite rare that something can't be taken out with the antibiotics we have, and while that's slowly getting worse it means that drug companies probably can't make back their investment by the time the drug goes generic.
So, up it to 25 years or something like that. It's better we have some expensive drugs that work than none at all.
This is what happens with overprescription to patients who don't need them and exploiting life-saving drugs for ranchers and megacorps to make more money raising meat.
It doesn't have any prominent names attached, which means it's still the existing civil service types who are just trying to do their jobs. Which they'll keep doing, until they they get DOGEd. Or they can't take it any more.
Readit News
I’m old enough to remember that penicillin cured almost everything. You started a 10-day course, and felt better in a day and a half.
The problem was that many folks stopped taking it, when they felt better.
These days, American meat is absolutely overflowing with antibiotics. I don’t know if there’s any kind of serious effort to address that.
This really wasn't the problem. There was never any strong science behind it, other than just an abundance of caution. But you can also argue that taking antibiotics for an extra week is bad because it prolongs the evolutionary pressure on microbes to develop resistance.
Either way, stuff like that is inconsequential. Most drug-resistant strains crop up in hospice and hospital settings where immunocompromised or gravely ill patients are kept on a cocktail of antibiotics for months or years, and resistant bacteria have a significant advantage and can spread easily.
And it's not like we have a good alternative to that - "let more people die earlier" is not an easy sell.
This is possibly followed by overuse of antibiotics in animal husbandry, although that part is more complicated than usually implied.
Factory Farms do feed animals low doses of antibiotics constantly because doing so makes farm animals more efficient at converting animal feed into tasty, tasty meat.
We aren't talking about giving injured or sick animals or people antibiotics until they are well, we are talking about creating conditions on huge factory farms where bacteria can only survive and thrive if they evolve the ability to shrug off the constant presence of antibiotics.
Unfortunately, bacteria also are able to trade those antibiotic resistance genes from one strain to another, so new antibiotic resistance genes can get transferred to bacteria like tuberculosis that are already a problem without learning new genetic tricks.
Look up the percentage of antibiotics by weight that are used on farms vs. those given to people.
> Of all antibiotics sold in the United States, approximately 80% are sold for use in animal agriculture; about 70% of these are “medically important” (i.e., from classes important to human medicine). Antibiotics are administered to animals in feed to marginally improve growth rates
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4638249/
stopping when you feel better might actually just be better, though I'd have to go find that reference again.
Eg: https://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3418
Decreasing big pharma's quarterly profits is not an easy sell, you mean?
Or are we supposed to pretend any of this has to do with concern over people's well being?
There’s several clearly wrong claims in that paragraph alone.
Here’s one counter claim with sources:
https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/antibioticresistance...
“Less than 0.5% of all meat samples tested in 2018 contained detectable antibiotics (U.S. Residue Program). Farmers, processors, and regulatory agencies work together to get this number to zero.”
Please challenge the thoughts you carry around. Sometimes it’s isn’t so.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard plenty of concern (from the public) that the latter could breed resistant bacteria, but never even heard of your interpretation as a concern.
> Did you know? As of January 1, 2017, Federal guidelines require a veterinarian to write the prescription or order when antibiotics important to human health will be used in feed or water of livestock and poultry. Why is this important? As in health care, professionals in veterinary medicine must identify where antibiotic use practices can be improved. Eliminating unnecessary antibiotic use is an important part of antibiotic stewardship.
Anyway, I took GP's comment to refer to the overuse of antibiotics in animals we slaughter and not the amount of antibiotics still detectable in the meat. As of 2015 at least that was still a problem and had an impact on resistant bacteria.
> Of all antibiotics sold in the United States, approximately 80% are sold for use in animal agriculture; about 70% of these are “medically important” (i.e., from classes important to human medicine).2 Antibiotics are administered to animals in feed to marginally improve growth rates and to prevent infections, a practice projected to increase dramatically worldwide over the next 15 years.3 There is growing evidence that antibiotic resistance in humans is promoted by the widespread use of nontherapeutic antibiotics in animals. Resistant bacteria are transmitted to humans through direct contact with animals, by exposure to animal manure, through consumption of undercooked meat, and through contact with uncooked meat or surfaces meat has touched.
1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4638249/
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-02404
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
Right now there's not much of an incentive to create new antibiotics. It's quite rare that something can't be taken out with the antibiotics we have, and while that's slowly getting worse it means that drug companies probably can't make back their investment by the time the drug goes generic.
So, up it to 25 years or something like that. It's better we have some expensive drugs that work than none at all.
On one side, bacteria have short lifecycles and huge populations, letting them mutate quickly to evade antibiotics, vaccines, or immune defenses.
On the other, humans don’t rely on slow genetic evolution - we adapt with medicine, vaccines, hygiene, and now faster tools like mRNA platforms.
The danger isn’t that we'll be "out-evolved" forever, but that we have to keep innovating or fall behind.
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/06/14/nx...
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