Author: Scotty Hendricks / Source: Big Think
Antibiotic resistance is perhaps the deadliest crisis you don’t think about much. In the United States alone it causes more than 20,000 deaths per year, and that number is likely to go up if nothing is done to fix the problem. If we lose the use of our greatest tool against disease, then the golden age of modern medicine could soon pass, and illnesses that were long thought defeated could return to kill millions once more.
The statistics are chilling, 10 percent of E. coli samples are resistant to at least one antibiotic, as are an increasing number of strains of salmonella and the bacterium that causes pneumonia. Certain Staph infections have developed such resistance to antibiotics that the acronym MRSA is both well-known and justly feared.
What is causing this?
To use antibiotics at all is to risk creating resistance to them. It’s natural selection at work. The bacteria which have any resistance to the drugs will survive and multiply, while those which can be killed by antibiotics will not.
This is why your doctor will often tell you to take antibiotics long past when you feel better; they want to leave nothing to chance. However, many people stop taking their drugs before they are supposed to.
Complicating matters is our often-poor use of the tools we have. One-third of the antibiotic prescriptions given in the United States are unnecessary, and half of all the antibiotics produced for use in the United States are used on farm animals.
The Threat of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Neil Schluger
Farm animals?
In many countries, farm animals are often given antibiotics at subtherapeutic levels to promote their growth.
Since the dosage is low, even bacteria with only moderate resistance to antibiotics can survive and multiply. So we’re practically asking for trouble when we do this.The practice does promote growth in farm animals, sometimes substantially. It isn’t necessary for farms to be able to produce food, however. It is merely a supplement to productivity. Given how many people work with animals and the increasing number of countries which use antibiotics to help promote animal growth, the chance for a “superbug” to be born inside a farm animal and make a quick leap to people is a growing possibility.
What can we do?
In a paper published in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics by Alberto Giubilini et al., a two-part solution is put forth; tax the meat that is made less expensive by the overuse of antibiotics and use the money to transition to a system where that overuse is not required.
But why should I pay more for meat? The farmers are the ones using the drugs!
In their essay, the philosophers argue that there are both deontological and consequentialist reasons to support such a tax being placed on the people who are buying the meat.
The deontological argument
The first part of their argument is based on the idea that we all have rights which should be respected. By this reasoning, if other people’s actions…
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