antibiotic resistance

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European Antibiotic Awareness Day Highlights Need For Urgent Action

Press Release | Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc. | November 17, 2014

Cubist Joining the Fight Against Antibiotic Resistance in the United Kingdom...

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Experts Propose Global Targets for Cutting Antibiotic Use

Chris Dall | CIDRAP News | August 19, 2016

Arguing that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens to erase decades of progress in medicine, public health, and food security, a group of global health experts is urging the United Nations (UN) to set global targets for reduced antibiotic consumption. In a commentary published yesterday in Science, the authors argue that countries should aim to consume no more than the current median global level of antibiotics (8.54 defined daily doses per capita per year), an amount they say would reduce global antibiotic use by more than 17.5%...

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Factory Farms Sow Superbugs

Jan Schakowsky and Dev Gowda | Chicago Sun-Times.com | October 7, 2014

Imagine a world where a scraped knee on a playground could have deadly complications. A world where chemotherapy and radiation are less effective cancer treatments because of increasingly common post-treatment infections, or where lifesaving drugs we regularly rely on today no longer heal people...

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Farm Antibiotics: Still Headed In The Wrong Direction

Maryn McKenna | Phenomena | December 14, 2015

New federal data released at the end of last week indicates that sales of antibiotics for use in food animals in the United States are still rising, despite public pressure to change the practice and condemnation by medicine that farm misuse and overuse is contributing to antibiotic resistance that threatens human health. That’s not good. It’s especially not good because the numbers just released cover the year 2014—the first year in a voluntary three-year period, set by the Food and Drug Administration, during which use of farm antibiotics is supposed to be reduced. If agriculture and the veterinary pharma industry didn’t manage reductions in Year 1, they have a hard task ahead of them to create significant change in Years 2 and 3...

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Farm-Drug Companies Agree To Antibiotics Ban. More Of The Same, Or Fresh Start?

Maryn McKenna | Wired | March 28, 2014

Big news in the realm of agricultural antibiotics: For the first time in almost 37 years of trying, the US Food and Drug Administration has achieved some control over the meat-industry practice of routinely giving antibiotics to livestock. The drawback: The control comes in the form of a voluntary commitment by veterinary drug manufacturers [...]. Read More »

Farmers Giving Livestock More Antibiotics Despite Superbug Threat

Josh Hicks | The Washington Post | October 7, 2014

The sale of antibiotics for livestock increased 16 percent from 2009 to 2012 in a trend that has troubling implications for resistance in humans, according to the Food and Drug Administration...

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FDA Antimicrobial Resistance Guidelines Fail to Address Root Causes

Last December, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published two controversial documents on its website: Guidance 213 and the Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD). The guidelines stirred a firestorm of protests from public health offiicials who argue that the guidelines are too weak to prevent the continuing growth of antibiotic resistant germs...the crisis, as outlined by Dr. Joseph Mercola, is that we are now "facing the perfect storm to take us back to the pre-antibiotic age, when some of the most important advances in modern medicine – intensive care, organ transplants, care for premature babies, surgeries and even treatment for many common bacterial infections – will no longer be possible." Read More »

FDA Fails To Protect Against Antibiotic Resistance, Guarantees More Needless Death And Suffering

Joseph Mercola | Mercola.com | April 23, 2014

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria infect two million Americans every year, causing at least 23,000 deaths. Even more die from complications related to the infections, and the numbers are steadily growing. Read More »

FDA Finally Imposes Some Controls On Agricultural Antibiotics. Sort Of.

Maryn McKenna | Wired | December 11, 2013

This morning, the US Food and Drug Administration dropped some long-awaited-but-still-big news regarding the use of antibiotics in meat production. Tl;dr: The FDA asked (but did not compel) the livestock industry to stop using the micro-dose “growth promoter” antibiotics that are widely believed to contribute to increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria in animals, food and humans. Read More »

FDA Inaction On Antibiotics Is Making The World Deadlier

Charles Kenny | Bloomberg Businessweek | December 23, 2013

This month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a guidance document (PDF) on the use of antibiotics in farm animals, which accounts for four-fifths of all antibiotics administered in the U.S. [...] The FDA suggests pharmaceutical companies voluntarily change a few labeling and marketing practices to help address that problem. Read More »

FDA Plays Chicken With Antibiotics: Newly Disclosed Documents Reveal Agency's "High Risk" Gamble With Human Health

Carmen Cordova | Switchboard | January 27, 2014

Here’s some unfortunate, but not so surprising news:  The Food and Drug Administration has allowed  30 potentially harmful antibiotic additives to remain approved for use in food animals (cows, pigs and chickens), even though the agency’s own scientists found them to pose a risk to human health or lack necessary data on safety. Read More »

FDA Scrutinizes Antibacterial Products For Hormonal Disruption, Bacterial Resistance

Maryn McKenna | Wired | December 16, 2013

[...] The FDA has announced that it is formally reconsidering “antibacterial” soaps and other personal-care products, charging that the antibacterial ingredients confer no benefit over regular soap and water while carrying extra risks. Read More »

FDA Takes Significant Steps To Address Antimicrobial Resistance

Press Release | Food and Drug Administration (FDA) | December 11, 2013

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today is implementing a plan to help phase out the use of medically important antimicrobials in food animals for food production purposes, such as to enhance growth or improve feed efficiency. The plan would also phase in veterinary oversight of the remaining appropriate therapeutic uses of such drugs. Read More »

FDA’s Step To Limit Animal Antibiotics Symbolic–Animal Husbandry Issues Must Still be Addressed

Ralph Loglisci | Civil Eats | December 13, 2013

In 1977, the [FDA] let everyone know that there was strong evidence that the use of penicillin and tetracycline for anything other than treating disease in livestock, could lead to the development of super bugs strong enough to render the powerful antibiotics useless in people. [...] Now, [the FDA] has finally mustered the courage to approve a strongly worded recommendation for producers to stop using medically important antibiotics as growth promoters and to give veterinarians oversight over therapeutic uses of the life-saving drugs. Read More »

Fears Abound As Superbugs Ravage India

Meredith Engel | NY Daily News | December 4, 2014

The country's dependence on antibiotics could be causing some bacteria to become resistant to medication. Third-World countries like India have higher rates of bacterial infections...

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