Antibiotic Overuse – Risks in Everyday Life

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A couple times a year local and national mass media put the spotlight on problems connected to antibiotic overuse. Some people consider those problems to be real and serious, and others think that the discussed topics are nothing more than new “fashionable” subjects to talk about, distracting people from “real” problems, such as climbing gas prices or war expenses. Meanwhile, antibiotic overuse continues as a common practice among US doctors and agribusinesses for the last 20 years. The practice of antibiotic overuse has put patient’s health at risk, contributed to antibiotic resistance and increased bacterial mutation to a new, stronger level; as well as it hitting the economy with new costly expenses in health care. It is time to stop abusing antibiotic usage.

For some doctors it might be just another day at the office, but for a lot of their patients serious health problems might be an issue of life or death. The value of the right doctor’s advice and administration of proper medicine was always imperative. That’s why ancient Greek doctors took the Hippocratic oath before opening a private practice. All doctors in the US still take the Hippocratic oath. Simple as it is, this oath covers the most important promise, and the mind set, that a new doctor should have, “I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm anyone.” If most doctors put the health needs of their patients as their priority and care about “doing no harm to health”, why there are so many alarming cases when doctors prescribe very powerful antibiotics to treat almost any health problem? It is definitely easier to prescribe one pill that will take care of all bacteria, but will that pill do no harm?...

... middle of paper ...

...ep up and subsidize, if needed, the pharmaceutical companies to promote the development of new antibiotics in order to keep up with bacteria that become resistant to old drugs.

Even though the history of antibiotic overuse started a long time ago, it is the time to break that harmful pattern and to diminish health risks by using antibiotics appropriately in all areas of everyday’s life.

Works Cited

Bussey, Eliza. CDC Warns about Overuse of Antibiotics. Northeast Indiana Pediatric Specialists. Web. 2 July 2011.

Hippocrates. Hippocratic Oath. Wikipedia.com. Web. 2 July 2011.

Sheppard, Jane. Consequences of Excessive Antibiotic Use. Healthy Child. Web. 2 July 2011

“Antibiotic”. Olemiss.edu. The University of Mississippi, n.p. Web 2 July 2011.

“The Basics: Antibiotic Resistance.” Keepantibioticsworking,com. KeepAntibioticWorking, n.p. Web. 5 July 2011.

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