Inject, inject, and smear on all manner of antibiotics to combat your ailments

Just over a half century ago, death from such diseases as pneumonia, tuberculosis, and meningitis were common. But the introduction of penicillin and other antibiotics during World War II revolutionized medicine and saved countless lives. Today, we routinely ingest, inject, and smear on all manner of antibiotics to combat our ailments.

But there’s trouble in paradise. Rather than passively succumbing to antibiotics, bacteria constantly evolve new strains to deflect the drugs’ firepower. For decades, drugmakers were able to stay one step ahead of the microbes with revamped antibiotics.

Now, however, health experts worry that the explosion in antibiotic use is breeding drug-resistant strains faster than scientists can effectively counter them. They warn that unless we stop cavalierly tossing antibiotics at every cough, sniffle, and earache, and reserve them for times when they are truly needed, these wonder drugs may lose their punch.

“People are dying from resistant strains of diseases such as tuberculosis, which were once treated with common antibiotics,” says Dr. David Smith, a pediatrician and former Texas commissioner of health who heads Texas Tech University’s Health Sciences Center. “This isn’t some exotic disease — it’s happening right here, right now.”

A mere decade ago, for instance, fewer than one percent of pneumococcus strains in the United States were resistant to penicillin. Today, scientists estimate that the number has skyrocketed to between 20 and 40 percent in many areas of the country. A 1994 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pegged the resistance rate among Atlanta-area preschoolers at 27 percent. One study in central Kentucky found that 50 percent of the bacteria found in the middle ear fluid of children under the age of two was resistant to penicillin. “Antibiotic resistance is like a lottery,” Smith puts it. “And your odds of losing have gone way up.”

This hit-or-miss success rate for antibiotics will probably come as a surprise to most people, as it did to Suzanne Michaelson, whose daughter was treated with one drug after another in an effort to clear up her ear and sinus infections. “Most people don’t give antibiotics a second thought. But they should,” she says.

Fortunately for the Michaelsons, there were still some effective drugs doctors could use to treat Katie. But Michaelson says she will never look at antibiotics the same way again. “I think antibiotics are needed, and I’m really grateful we have them. I still use them when my kids have a serious ear infection. But now I don’t jump for them right away, and I appreciate doctors who have the same conservative approach. When they tell me I don’t need an antibiotic, I don’t demand one. I say, ‘Great!’”