The Obama administration on Thursday announced measures to tackle the growing threat of antibiotic resistance, outlining a national strategy that includes incentives for the development of new drugs, tighter stewardship of existing ones, and improvements in tracking the use of antibiotics and the microbes that are resistant to them.
The actions are the first major White House effort to confront a public health crisis that takes at least 23,000 lives a year, and many experts were pleased that a president had finally focused on the issue. But some said the strategy fell short in not recommending tougher measures against the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture, which, they argue, is a big part of the problem.
[---]
The government has estimated that more than 70 percent of antibiotics in the United States are given to animals, and scientists and industry are at odds over how much that use in industrial-scale farming contributes to problems in people. Companies use antibiotics to prevent sickness when animals are packed together in ways that breed infection. They also use them to make animals grow faster, though the Food and Drug Administration has taken steps that it says will stop that.
But many advocates and experts remain skeptical that the agency’s actions will be effective, because the rules contain what they say is a sizable loophole. Experts expressed disappointment that the White House was not calling on the F.D.A. to close it.
The section on agricultural use in the council’s report “sounds like it was written by someone from the meat industry,” said Dr. James Johnson, a professor of medicine and an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota. “Really disappointing. Actually, depressing.”
This initiative — or its failure — is potentially a more important health issue than Obamacare, yet it will not receive 1/1000th of the attention. Without reliable antibiotics, a lot of now-routine operations would become a kind of lottery.
No comments:
Post a Comment