By Joseph Picard: Subscribe to Joseph's RSS feed
September 30, 2010 7:35 PM EDT
The philosopher Frederick Nietzsche once famously said, "That which does not kill me, makes me stronger."
That may or may not be true for human beings. It is certainly true for bacteria. The superbugs are among us and they are not leaving. Indeed, they are growing stronger.
"The incidence of drug-resistant infections is a national and global problem, in both the civilian and military world, and has grown dramatically over the past decade in civilian hospitals," said Rep. Vic Snyder, D-AK, at a House subcommittee hearing Wednesday on what the military is doing to deal with multi-drug resistant organisms, aka superbugs.
The military, according to the military physicians who testified to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, has ramped up anti-infection measures over the past few years in the areas of prevention through standardized practices, detection through screenings and surveillance, and control through isolation, sanitization and the targeted use of antibiotics.
The military has had some success.
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"While considerable progress has been made in controlling infection, the problem has not been solved," Congressman Snyder said. "New outbreaks will be a continuing challenge."
In July of this year, Dr. Stuart Levy, director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University School of Medicine, and a world-renowned expert on superbugs, appeared before another House subcommittee.
"We are not gaining ground in the struggle against antibiotic resistance," Levy said. "All of us - you, me and your constituents - are at ever greater risk of contracting a resistant bacterial infection and even one that is untreatable."
Levy explained to lawmakers "the paradoxical nature of human engagement with antibiotics."
"On the one hand, these miraculous drugs are pillars of modern medicine, helping us to manage and prevent dangerous bacterial infections and save lives. On the other hand, the widespread use - and misuse - of antibiotic drugs has spawned the evolution of life-threatening bacteria that render our current antibiotics useless," he said.
While the military physicians in their testimony this week, and the military branches in their efforts over the past several years, concentrated on prevention and control of superbugs, Levy took aim at the root cause of the problem - the overuse and misuse of antibiotics.
"Some progress has been made in developing protocols and encouraging more judicious use of antibiotics in human medicine," Levy told lawmakers in July. "But there has been precious little progress with regard to stemming the spigot of antibiotics flowing into animal agriculture."
Kathleen Young is the executive director of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, a worldwide organization founded by Levy.
"The problem is that the animal agriculture industry makes massive use of low-dose antibiotics for growth promotion and in place of effective infection prevention methods," Young said, adding that the farm animal population is much larger than the human population.
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