"Do I have to take this?" I asked Mother, whose face was shrouded in gray of worries, "My cold isn't that serious!"
"Take it!" Said Mother with authority, "Antibiotics seem to just work for you! And you don't want to wait until a 40C fever gets you, do you? "
That is a clip of our conversation not too long ago. I won't forget the runny nose, aching throat, sore muscles, coughs, and all the discomforts caused by a cold or flu. Thanks to the medicine my mother asked me to take, I was recovered from them in less than a week. As everything that has helped me, antibiotics owe my gratitude. Or do they?
Humans have had a powerful weapon to fight against infections triggered by bacteria from the day of Ernest Duchesne, a French medical student in 1896, initially discovering Penicillin, and Scottish physician Alexander Fleming rediscovering and introducing it to the world in 1928. When penicillin became widely available during the Second World War, it was a medical miracle, rapidly vanquishing the biggest wartime killer--infected wounds. Many lives were saved. Kids had Daddy back, and wives joyfully hugged Husband. Many families didn't lose loved ones. Just by a mere thought of this I would have acted in too much injustice had I said antibiotics weren't the helper to humans.
While the medicine helps us in a prominent way, however, the rise of antibiotic-resistant infection sends us in alarm. The first bug to battle penicillin was Staphylococcus aureus. This bacterium is often a harmless passenger in the human body, but it can cause illness, such as pneumonia or toxic shock syndrome, when it overgrows or produces a toxin.
In 1967, another type of penicillin-resistant pneumonia, caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae and called pneumococcus, surfaced in a remote village in Papua New Guinea. In 1983, a hospital-acquired intestinal infection caused by the bacterium Enterococcus faecium joined the list of bugs that outwit penicillin.
Antibiotic resistance spread fast. Between 1979 and 1987, for example, only 0.02 percent of pneumococcus strains infecting a large number of patients surveyed by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were penicillin-resistant. CDC's survey included 13 hospitals in 12 states. Today, 6.6 percent of pneumococcus strains are resistant, according to a report in the June 15, 1994, Journal of the American Medical Association by Robert F. Breiman, M.D., and colleagues at CDC. The agency also reports that in 1992, 13,300 hospital patients died of bacterial infections that were resistant to antibiotic treatment.
Why has this ever happened? "There was complacency in the 1980s. The perception was that we had licked the bacterial infection problem. Drug companies weren't working on new agents. They were concentrating on other areas, such as viral infections," says Michael Blum, M.D., medical officer in the Food and Drug Administration's division of anti-infective drug products. "In the meantime, resistance increased to a number of commonly used antibiotics, possibly related to overuse of antibiotics. "
Overuse of antibiotics is one main factor in the resistance, and it reportedly takes away about 80,000 patients' lives in our country. Patients usually are very anxious to be healthy again so that they think the sooner their diseases are cured, the better. In this conception they only choose what best works for them. As to What-ifs that *may* happen thereafter, they are just "praying that such things will not bother them because they have already suffered so much," or simply comforting themselves with the thought that " no use to care about future things, for it's illusionary." Everyone does not believe he will be one of the victims of antibiotics, the most effective pills for common colds and infections.
Go to doctors for a better solution? My father did so, and he did get rid of his fever overnight after the treatment in the hospital, with the best antibiotics the doctor prescribed! Like me, he only came down with a faint flu!
"But I want to save it for some more serious viral diseases later in my life, Mom!" In the end of our conversation I rejected.
"Who cares about things in the future? It's wise to solve your problem NOW! Think about your father. The doctor doesn't care that much. Why do you!" Mother reasoned, "Take it if you want to get well in no time!"
Perhaps we will be lucky enough not to be the preys for the Killer antibiotics. But who can ensure us that we will not be duped by ourselves?
Jenny
*Some information came from Ask Jeeves and Google China.
