
The Age of Infection - fraqed
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/30/the-age-of-infection-antibiotics-microbes-germ-ichip/
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omegaworks
>Numerous health experts have warned that, without new antibiotics, the world
risks a return to the medical dark ages, when the slightest knick or scratch
could spawn a lethal infection that doctors had no way to treat.

The use of antibiotics in the agricultural industry has allowed farmers to
raise animals in inhumane conditions with minimal sanitation. The CDC believes
this is contributing to antibiotic resistance, and the FDA has only been able
to _recommend_ that farmers use the drugs "judiciously." [1] We effectively
subsidize this industry on the back of future species-scale human suffering.

Our politicians have proven to be too shortsighted to do anything but hope for
new discoveries, prioritizing short-term gains over a catastrophe that those
with multi-drug-resistant infections are presently living through. This
article does us a disservice by misrepresenting that discovering new
antibiotics is the _only_ way we can address this problem.

1\.
[http://www.cdc.gov/narms/animals.html](http://www.cdc.gov/narms/animals.html)

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meowface
I agree this is a major and disgusting problem, however the article does
mention this; albeit with a different assumed reason.

>farmers have pumped cattle and chickens full of antibiotics because they
plump up the animals (possibly because the antibiotics kill benign gut
bacteria that usually take some of the creatures’ daily calories for
themselves).

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omegaworks
Oops. Missed that!

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Fomite
Every age has been the "Age of Infection".

