
Limiting Antibiotics in Animals - ColinWright
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/opinion/limiting-antibiotics-in-animals.html?_r=0
======
DanBC
> _I am astonished by the letter from Bernadette Dunham, the director of the
> Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, especially
> since she told a House committee on April 9 that she was unsure how
> antibiotic resistance develops._

I've posted this before, but some people may have missed it.

"Defeating the superbugs" (<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ms5c6>) has a
segment showing bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics.

([http://v6.tinypic.com/player.swf?file=24goih4&s=6](http://v6.tinypic.com/player.swf?file=24goih4&s=6))
(Sorry about the lousy host; YouTube's content sniffing detects this as BBC
property and blocks it.)

They have a slab of jelly. The jelly has sections of differing strength of
antibiotic. There's a section with no antibiotic, then 10x, then 100x then
1000x. (They cannot dissolve any more antibiotic into the jelly at that
point.)

A time lapse camera shows the bacteria growing, and developing resistance to
each section.

It's an excellent bit of video.

~~~
raverbashing
I wonder if this can be used to develop useful traits in bacteria.

For example, develop bacteria that can digest some pollutants.

~~~
ufo
It would depend on what sort of pollutant you are talking about. Many
antibiotics act in subtle and complex ways because they need to be able to
damage bacteria without damaging the human. Effective, evolving resistance is
just a small "fix" for the bacteria.

However, some kinds of things like strong detergents, high temperatures, and
so on qould require too much change to protect against so the bacteria can't
evolve resistance to it. (sure, there are bacteria out there that might better
resist these extreme conditions but you won't easily be able to evolve any
bacteria you want to do the same)

~~~
Houshalter
Sure it could probably evolve resistance, it would just take much more time,
and in an environment that constantly maintains a reasonable amount of
selection pressure, increasing it as they evolve. Humans could assist the
process by "island hopping". Like trying to select for ones that produce a
certain chemical, then another chemical that requires that, step by step. As
opposed to hoping they get a mutation that lets them produce a complex
chemical by random chance.

It would still take a while, but bacteria have very short generations and can
support huge populations, so it's _far, far_ easier for them to evolve than
anything else.

~~~
ufo
What you are suggesting seems awefully hard to do though. Its pobably easier
to just get a ready-made gene from some other bacteria and insert it into the
bacteria you care about.

~~~
Houshalter
That only works if such a gene exists already though.

------
jballanc
Where I live, fruits and vegetables are ridiculously cheap, and meat is rather
expensive. For example, apricots (which are just now in season) are $2.50 per
pound. When the height of apricot season kicks in, the price will come down to
around 50¢ per pound. But if I want a steak I can expect to pay at least $12
per pound.

I take a certain comfort in the notion that this price difference reflects the
true cost of producing meat. Likewise, everything is locally sourced because
there isn't really any other option, so everything taste fresh. Produce is
only available when its in season, but this adds a fun sense of anticipation
as the seasons change.

That's one point of view. The other point of view is that feeding antibiotics
to cattle improves yield. Transporting produce long distances ensures that it
can be grown where conditions are best, and flying fruits in from Chile means
that supermarket customers can find what they crave even in the middle of
winter.

The US has a long tradition of asking "can we?" not "should we?" Sometimes, as
with the Apolo mission, this is a very good thing. Other times, as with the
issue addressed here, it can be rather bad.

 _Edit_ : Also, as I always do when this topic comes up, I'll point to this
extremely useful list on Wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antibiotics> . This battle is
occurring on two fronts: the bugs are becoming more resistant, and we're
having an increasingly hard time finding new weapons to fight them off.

~~~
gertef
A pound of steak does not have the same level of water content or nutritional
value of a pound of apricot, so that comparison is not meaningful. Cost per
pound of each nutrient is a relevant comparison.

Dried apricots cost $5-$10/lb. Does that make them overpriced compared to
fresh apricots?

~~~
jballanc
It was not my goal to compare apricots to steak, but rather the price of
apricots here to the price in the US contrasted with the price of meat here to
the price in the US. The US has optimized the production of meat such that the
price is artificially low, but at what total cost?

------
Egregore
I don't understand, how people, who supposedly must be well educated in
biology, allow antibiotics to loose efficiency by feeding them to animals.

~~~
ars
I've heard that the vast majority of antibiotics that animals are fed are not
of a type that has ever been approved for humans.

~~~
jimworm
While true, it is also irrelevant. All known antibiotics belong to a very
small number of classes by their mode of action. Resistance genes often
confers resistance to not just one antibiotic, but an entire class, for
example mecA in MRSA. Therefore it is possible for a bacterium to develop
resistance to all therapeutic antibiotics without ever having encountered the
exact types.

What's more alarming is that bacteria frequently exchange genetic material
between species. Just because the resistance genes have not been discovered in
a pathogen does not mean that the gene cannot be easily and instantly
transferred from another species, and the chance of that happening is greatly
increased if the environment is flooded with resistance genes due to selection
by human use of antibiotics.

~~~
gwt561324
Just because it hasn't happened yet is not a reason not to do something. A
tornado hasn't wiped out my house yet, should I move because it might happen
some day? Of course there is a risk associated with their use, but the
estimated risk is miniscule. It's not even measurable yet. Let's worry about
problems we can identify and solve rather than wasting time fretting about
what may be.

~~~
jimworm
If by "risk" you meant the horizontal transfer of resistance, then I point you
at genomic studies of horizontal gene transfer across bacteria. It happens
with such regularity that the concept of a species cannot be naively applied
to bacteria.

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=horizontal+gene+transfe...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=horizontal+gene+transfer+genomes)

------
joahua
While it would be great if the FDA did something about this, there are
probably global dimensions to this problem also. Presumably antibiotics are
used globally against strains of disease that spread quite merrily from
country to country.

I'd assume epidemiology is not domestically constrained: the
antibiotic/agricultural practices of one nation impact all others.

I have no idea what is standard practice for domestic agriculture in my own
country. Things I think I "know" about agriculture are distorted through the
prism of American cultural influence - documentaries like Food Inc., are writ
large in the imagination even where these are only concerned with domestic
affairs.

What resources exist that document antibiotic use on a global basis?

~~~
pyre
Feeding the animals antibiotics constantly also 'increases yield' because the
animals grow larger. You think that the head of any agriculture company is
going to sign off on something that decreases yield? We've got quarterly
profits to think of! Think of the profits that we would lose! </sarcasm>

------
HSO
What an unfortunate name to have in this field!

________________________

 _And for Pete's sake, I do note that I agree with her wholeheartedly on the
substance. It's just the name that struck me out of left field ;-)_

------
sev
Animal research/experimentation is a misleading, conglomerate driven force
that makes us all believe it is the only/best way to do biological and medical
research for the benefit of humans. The reason it is
conglomerate/pharmaceutical driven is because these organizations must rely on
animal experimentation to get funding.

 _What affects an animal has for the most part no relationship to how it
affects a human_

Yes, there are relatively few instances where how something affects humans is
the same as how it affects an animal, but leaving that up to chance as we do
research is absolutely not the way to do this!

PCP, which has a violence inducing affect on humans is sometimes used as a
horse tranquilizer.

Not only are humans biologically, physiologically different than animals, but
each animal is biological/physiologically different from one another.

Due to the fact that animal experimentation/research for the most part
(relatively speaking) has not had positive results, researchers started to
rely on more extreme methods, such as _injecting human DNA into animals_ so
that the animals become more human when they do their research. This causes
bacteria/virii which normally would not have been able to penetrate a human,
to learn through animals being used as a human DNA surrogate, and therefore
becoming stronger and knowing how to attack human cells. Hence the topic of
this article and antibiotics becoming less and less effective.

edit, references:

1\. Lethal Medicine (Documentary)

Part 1: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iYOTH_krTk>

Part 2: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF3yn4-9obw>

Part 3: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Rp9xxW2yc>

Part 4: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld8F9yhUb4M>

2\. [http://www.livescience.com/7962-human-dna-injected-
animals.h...](http://www.livescience.com/7962-human-dna-injected-animals.html)

[http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7681252/ns/health-
cloning_and_stem...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7681252/ns/health-
cloning_and_stem_cells/t/scientists-create-animals-are-part-human)

-In 2004, researchers looking to study viral infections injected human blood stem cells into pigs. The unexpected result: pig cells, human cells and some that combined bits of both developed in the pigs' blood.

-In 2005, researchers created a flock of sheep with bits of human organs growing inside of them, part of an effort (alson carried out in pigs) to eventually create human organ factories.

-Some lab monkeys pack a human form of the Huntington's gene which allow scientists to investigate the development of the disease.

-There are mice with human-like livers that allow studying the effects of drugs. _

~~~
jlangenauer
Do you have a reference for the "injecting human DNA into animals" claim you
make? It would be extremely disturbing, if true.

~~~
ars
Why is it extremely disturbing?

Researchers can take human cancerous (cells) and transplant them into an
animal to study. So the animal has human cancerous cells growing on it.

The human DNA doesn't change the animal, it grows on top of it.

See: [http://emice.nci.nih.gov/aam/mouse/transplantation-mouse-
mod...](http://emice.nci.nih.gov/aam/mouse/transplantation-mouse-models-1)

------
crikli
There is such a preponderance of FUD about how livestock are cared for that it
boggles the mind. People that have never once talked to a farmer or rancher
have these huge opinions about how food "should" be produced based on some
bullshit they saw in an article or some agitprop documentary.

In this instance the inference is that livestock are just fed mountains of
antibiotics indiscriminately. Are you kidding me? Why would anyone do that?
While not as expensive as meds for humans, veterinary medications are not
cheap and no operator is going to waste money treating a whole herd unless it
is absolutely necessary.

Furthermore, take some time to read up on the FDA website about how livestock
production is regulated. It is far from the free for all that is so frequently
represented.

If you are interested in a very educated and thorough perspective on how
livestock are cared for at a feedyard, check out this blog by a Dartmouth
educated operator in Nebraska: <http://feedyardfoodie.wordpress.com/>

On a semi-related note, can you name the product that was responsible for the
last three E. coli outbreaks here in the States?

~~~
InclinedPlane
80% of antibiotics produced in the US are used in agriculture.

30 billion pounds just last year. That's half a billion cubic feet, or a pile
about 800 feet high. And while the more or less official definition of
"mountain" is 1,000 feet, I don't think it provides much solace that it takes
2 years instead of 1 for America's livestock to consume a _literal mountain_
of antibiotics.

~~~
gwt561324
80% of the antibiotics used in the US are used in agriculture because they
make up 80% of the mass. Dosage is based on weight, and it's purely a question
of mass, not a choice between animals or people.

I also think your billion is wrong. According the Union of Concerned
Scientists, the 30 billion was the cost of the antibiotics, not the weight.
The antibiotics weighed 24 million pounds. Besides, what does the total mass
have to do with prudent use? If I said we used 100 billion pounds to save
people, would you consider that acceptable?

You also need to put that number in context. In 2010, American meat companies
produced: 26.4 billion pounds of beef 22.5 billion pounds of pork 5.8 billion
pounds of turkey 313 million pounds of veal, lamb and mutton 37.2 billion
pounds of chicken

Finally, there is no clear evidence that the proper use of antibiotics in food
animals has ever led to a disease resistant bacteria in humans. Don't you find
it much more alarming that your GP will prescribe antibiotics to common
visitors just to get them out the door? It's far more likely you're going to
die purely because someone next to you won't leave the doctor until they get
an antibiotic, regardless of their health status.

~~~
mynewwork
I realize I'm responding to an account created today, which has already posted
multiple pro-antibiotic comments, so I understand that gwt561324 likely has a
strong vested interest in this and is likely not a regular HN member.

But I would like to point out the final paragraph here is pure FUD rhetoric.
"Don't you find it much more alarming", "It's far more likely" (with no
evidence to support claim).

The problem here isn't how frequently antibiotics used in agriculture cause
resistance, it's the scale of the problem once they do. Sub-prime mortgage
derivatives were traded millions of times without a problem, but once the
system broke things got very bad very fast. That's the best analogy I can
think of for antibiotic resistance, there is a massive systemic risk, being
ignored for short-term profits.

