
The Fat Drug - snewman
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/opinion/sunday/the-fat-drug.html
======
kens
This article handwaves over a few key things. The first half of the article
discusses how antibiotics in feed make animals grow bigger. However, the whole
point of feed supplements is to give animals _more_ muscle and _less_ fat [1],
since that's what customers pay for. So antibiotics in animals go the exact
opposite direction from obesity in humans.

Second, antibiotics in feed are pretty much constant, while humans hardly ever
take antibiotics. The article mentions children take antibiotics once a year
on average, but the median must be very different from the mean. (I expect a
few children take antibiotics very often, and most children take them very
rarely.) In addition, if taking antibiotics once a year had the same increased
growth rate effects as putting them in feed constantly, farmers would do that
for the cost saving.

Overall, this article seems to pad out a hugely speculative idea to try to
make it seem more plausible.

(I should know better than to get involved in a nutrition discussion on HN.)

[1] A random reference explaning how antibiotics improve meat quality by
causing more protein and less fat: [http://animalsmart.org/feeding-the-
world/growth-promotant-us...](http://animalsmart.org/feeding-the-world/growth-
promotant-use-in-animal-production)

~~~
wobbleblob
There's another thing the article hand waves over: there is no actual evidence
that antibiotics in feed have an effect on the animals' growth. [1]

It is yet another piece of farmer folklore, like hail cannons and routine
castration. They are believed to work, without any scientific basis.

The thing is, farmers believe so strongly in this myth, that even in places
where antibiotics are banned as a feed additive, they bribe vets to prescribe
their livestock antibiotics for a variety of fictitious ailments, so they can
keep giving it.

[1]
[http://www.tufts.edu/med/apua/news/newsletter_33_3555326098....](http://www.tufts.edu/med/apua/news/newsletter_33_3555326098.pdf)

~~~
wazoox
This is even more serious: these morons are making the most revolutionary tool
of modern medicine useless for no gain at all? It's crazy.

~~~
1stop
I thought the original reason for Antibiotics in feed, was so the farmer could
save money on conditions (i.e the farm can be a little bit unhealthy for
animals, as they are all on antibiotics... the growth effects were/are
secondary...)

~~~
wobbleblob
Not at all. Antibiotics are added to feed in sub clinical doses.

------
crazygringo
> drugs can act like a kind of superfood to produce cheap meat

> Trash, it turned out, could be transformed into meat.

> pumping them with food and antibiotics. And yes, this did make the pigs
> fatter

> particularly in female mice: They gained about twice as much body fat as the
> control-group mice

This article is infuriating sloppy, as it starts out talking about _meat_
(muscle), and then slides into talking about _fat_ , as if they were the same
thing, and it's not clear at all that the author is talking about the same
things, using the wrong words, or talking about things that can be connected
at all.

~~~
tgb
Agreed but the mice study also included a higher fat diet as well as
antibiotics. Presumably farm animals are not being fed donuts and so that
explains the implicit difference between the two situations adequately.
Nonetheless, I agree that the distinction should be made more clear.

I'm wondering whether body builders are already dosing themselves on
antibiotics? It seems like someone would have tried that a while ago and then
built a minor religion out of it had it worked. A quick google search suggests
that body builders tend to think that antibiotics will reduce muscle gain due
to inhibiting digestion through killing off bacteria.

------
spikels
This is almost certainly bullshit. The poor quality of information in even the
best newspapers is astounding! And it seems to almost always be at it's worst
when it comes to medical issues.

How about some actual evidence? Not even a single peer reviewed study is
mentioned. There are so many ways that this "idea" could be disproven with a
simple study or even analysis of existing longitudinal studies. Or what about
cross country comparisons, etc. And which of the dozens of popular antibiotics
has this effect? Is it dosage relate? C'mon people at least do the minimal
basic analysis before you suggest suggesting cause and effect.

This is exactly how all kinds of stupid ideas get into our heads. Not only do
they waste our time but they can have real effects such as the continuing
vaccine scare. Will this be the beginning of an antibiotics scare?

~~~
bequanna
>How about some actual evidence? Not even a single peer reviewed study is
mentioned.

I agree. Some interesting points are made-- but it does all seem like a bit of
handwaving.

>Will this be the beginning of an antibiotics scare?

Given the expanding prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria coupled with
the shrinking pipeline of new antibiotic drugs, I think we should be at least
a little worried. At this point, additional restraint in antibiotic use
(especially agricultural) would be prudent.

------
brownbat
I thought recent research was struggling to reproduce the same growth
promotion effects in low dose antibiotics...

My money's on "neither harmful, nor especially useful" for the long term
scientific consensus here... but I admittedly have a natural inclination
towards positions that alienate both sides in any dispute.

Here's one discussion for poultry, though still digging for the economic
analysis for swine and cattle:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1804117/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1804117/)

------
ef47d35620c1
Coke, that used to come in 6 ounce bottles, now comes in 24 and 32 ounce
bottles. And rather than _one_ once a week as a treat, we can have one or two
each day. That's at least part of the problem.

~~~
bequanna
If you are referring to causes of obesity, caloric excess is certainly part of
the problem. I think the author is attempting to make the point that 'it's
complicated'.

I think the question the author raises is a good one. We don't have a very
good handle on what bacteria live in our bodies, much less what they all do.
If we are destroying certain bacteria with antibiotics inside us, what does
that mean for our bodies? There appears to be a long observed correlation
between ingesting antibiotics and weight gain.

------
lukasm
God I love the mobile version of nytimes. Please always post these.

~~~
fractalsea
This is so true.

News sites tend to be so "busy" and messy. I love the clean look of the mobile
version. I really get what people mean by "mobile first design" now...

------
graycat
The discussion here is terrific. With high irony, this discussion misses the
larger point: The NYt is part of old media. As for all old media, they are in
the ad business. As has long been common in old media, the purpose of a
'story' is to grab the readers by the heart, the gut, and below the belt,
always below the shoulders, never between the ears.

In particular, the NYT wants story 'themes' so that they will 'condition'
their readers to accept that 'stories' in these themes can be realistic. Then
the NYT can write silly stories in the themes, have their readers take the
stories seriously, and, thus, have some special and especially effective ways
to grab their readers by the heart, the gut, and below the belt.

One of the themes is the 'environment' and a morality play of evil humans
destroying the environment. That story goes back to the Mayans who killed
people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky.
Old religions of nature worship were similar. It's a special case of good
versus evil, of sin, transgression, retribution, and, maybe, redemption,
likely via sacrifice. Kill a lamb. Give up cars and walk. Etc.

In this story it's the evil, and dumb and greedy, farmers 'messing around with
powerful, dangerous, hostile forces of nature with consequences they can't
possibly understand' and, thus, being a threat to all of us.

So, the NYT pumps this stuff out. They have some conditioned, devoted readers
who lap up this swill.

It's not science, news, reporting, or investigative journalism. Instead it's
just a nasty manipulation.

Here at HN we would be fools to take such swill at face value and argue
against its logic and science. The NYT doesn't care a hoot about logic or
science but just the NYT manipulation and, then, their ad revenue.

~~~
tgb
What article were you reading? The entire point of this was to connect the
fact that antibiotics enable unusual animal growth to the possibility that
antibiotics were enabling the unusual human growth that has been occurring
these past few decades. This is a reasonably hypothesis that I, at least, had
never considered but in retrospect seems like something that obviously should
be investigated further. There is nothing moralistic about this. Sure, the
article mentions in passing about drug-resistant strains but this was not
about painting farmers as greedy dumb and evil. If this is a click-bait link
it's one that feeds on our self-image issues and on passing the blame to
others and things like that, not on some morality play environmentalism. You
can find that in other articles if you want.

~~~
graycat
You are very carefully, rationally, and objectively taking the article at face
value; I'm not granting that the article deserves to be taken at face value.
One reason is, the article is from the NYT which has burned me too often in
the past. Another reason is that this thread did a really good job showing
some of the severe rational weaknesses in the article -- the writing and
thought here were much better than from the NYT.

So, I reject that the article from tbe NYT was just an effort at rationalism
and information. That hypothesis rejected, I look for another explanation --
the NYT is trying to jerk me around. Do I have solid proof? No, but doing some
beautiful rationalism in the face of some low grade rationalism from the NYT
begins to look like here at HN we are being manipulated and are being foolish.

------
tokenadult
The article explores hypotheses about what antibiotics might be doing to human
health. A quotation from one of the expert sources sums up the conclusion:
"'It’s still too early to draw definitive conclusions,' Dr. Cho said. 'And
antibiotics remain a valuable resource that physicians use to fight
infections.'" A couple years ago, a participant here shared a data chart from
_Scientific American_ that appears to no longer be at the original source but
which has been mirrored[1] at the website of the journal _Nature._ The data
chart points out that all-cause mortality has been steadily decreasing at all
ages during my lifetime throughout the developed world. This is roughly the
time span covered by the interesting article kindly submitted here. If human
intake of antibiotics (which, after all, in many cases are "natural"
substances emitted by fungi to guard against being destroyed by bacteria) has
increased, as surely must be the case, it doesn't seem to be hurting us much.

On the specific issue of body weight, "normal" weight ranges for a given
height were defined years ago on the basis of statistics on weight
distributions in the general population. Oddly, current mortality and
morbidity statistics tend to show that the persons with longest expected
lifespans are not persons with "normal" weight as defined by body mass index
but rather persons who are (slightly) "overweight." (This is however, most
true for "overweight" persons who have good cardiovascular fitness.[2]) So if
today's population in developed countries weighs more than populations a
generation ago, the issue to look at is how many people have shifted from
underweight to normal weight, how many from normal weight to overweight, and
how many from overweight to obsesity. Obesity is definitely harmful to health.
Moderate physical exercise, the kind I get by substituting walking or
bicycling to do errands for driving, is surely good for pretty nearly
everyone, independent of other lifestyle factors. But it has yet to be shown
that antibiotic intake in the current amounts experienced by human beings in
the developed world is harmful. There has been investigation in the last
decade or so of the hypothesis that some antiobiotics may be protective
against heart disease,[3] for instance, although maybe not all antibiotics
have the same risk-benefit profile.

[1]
[http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...](http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box/scientificamerican0912-54_BX1.html)

[http://www.pinterest.com/pin/195977021257786739/](http://www.pinterest.com/pin/195977021257786739/)

[2]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20118386](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20118386)

[3]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC387430/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC387430/)

~~~
glaugh
RE your first point: I think everyone would agree that antibiotics are a net
good, that their use should cause and correlate with declining mortality. But
that wouldn't make it any less true that there could be second-order negative
effects that are worth understanding and mitigating.

Was not aware of that "slightly overweight" finding, good stuff.

------
anon4
> anti-antibiotics

Wouldn't you call that simply "biotics"? Or maybe "pro-biotics"?

~~~
windsurfer
An anti-antibiotic would work against antibiotics instead of promoting
biotics. Perhaps it would have a similar effect in the end, but the means are
different.

------
spingsprong
No, the amount we're eating is making us fat.

~~~
guruz
And you're eating more because something tricks your body into not feeling
full earlier. Be it sugar, your gut bacteria, drinking liquid calories,
hormons, [...] Many reasons I'm sure.

~~~
bluedino
Small soft drinks are now 20oz, restaurants give you triple what a serving
size should be for most meals, buffets reign supreme, and snacks and high-
calorie drinks are part of our daily routines and culture.

~~~
vilhelm_s
But that could be an effect of people being hungrier, rather than the cause.

I think the most convincing clue that there is something nonobvious going on
is that lab animals are also getting fatter, despite being on a standardized
and controlled diet
([http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101124/full/news.2010.628.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101124/full/news.2010.628.html)).

