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Resistance to antibiotics gives rise to a nightmare: that one day diseases caused by germs will no longer be susceptible to treatment and that we will be back where we started, before the germ theory of disease had even been put forward.
It has long been suspected that promiscuous and inappropriate use of antibiotics by doctors, often at the request or demand of their patients, is responsible for the rise of antibiotic resistance.
Further evidence for this reasonable hypothesis was provided in the Lancet of February 10. Researchers in Belgium divided 224 healthy volunteers into three groups: two received a course of different antibiotics commonly used in the treatment of chest infections, and one a placebo.
Within a week, the resistance of the normal bacterial flora of their |
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Careless prescription of antibiotics is hazardous to
public health |
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throats had risen by as much as four times in the two groups given antibiotics. Six weeks later - that is, five weeks after all treatment had stopped - resistant bacteria in the treated groups was still three times more common than in the placebo group. A strong effect was still detectable six months later.
It is clear, then, that the careless prescribing of antibiotics is hazardous to the public health, and might help to bring about the nightmare. I think I am guilty myself: years ago I acted as a locum for a general practitioner, one of whose patients had received a repeat prescription for antibiotics for seven years. She thought they were for headaches, and was so angry and threatening when I tried to stop her prescription that I gave in.
Resistance is stronger in germs than in doctors. 
FIRST POSTED MARCH 1, 2007
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