Why doctors being afraid to tell their patients "no" has screwed us all

[dpareja]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/bacteria-getting-upper-hand-in-antibiotics-arms-race-1.2555750

So for a good long while patients would just tell their doctors to prescribe antibiotics for whatever they had, and doctors would often oblige. Well, now we're reaping the "rewards" of that.

We’re accustomed to hearing our era referred to as the Space Age, the Information Age or the Digital Age. It could just as easily be called the Antibiotic Age.

Very few advances in the 20th Century so utterly changed life — and improved quality of life — the way Sir Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin did in 1928.

...

Fleming knew that bacteria would eventually develop resistance to penicillin. Bacteria’s phenomenally fast rates of reproduction means it can evolve very rapidly, putting the long-term effectiveness of any antibiotic at risk.

He also foresaw that penicillin could be misused and misapplied, and that could speed up the development of antibiotic resistance. That’s exactly what’s happened.

Yup, we're basically at the point where antibiotics are useless because the pharmaceutical companies won't develop new ones (not enough money in it) and so things like cancer treatment and hip replacements become deadly (immune suppression and infection, respectively).

So congratulations to everyone who just asked for pills for their coughs (that weren't strep). You've fucked us all.

[Art Vandelay]

Eh, it was going to happen sooner or later.

[Ironchew]

So for a good long while patients would just tell their doctors to prescribe antibiotics for whatever they had, and doctors would often oblige. Well, now we're reaping the "rewards" of that.

It had less to do with patients demanding antibiotics (most people have a hard time even finishing the bottle as prescribed) and more to do with doctors being generally clueless about spamming broad-spectrum drugs and, perhaps even more insidiously, antibiotics appearing in products they had no business appearing in -- antibacterial soaps, etc. The broad-spectrum antibiotics used in agriculture pretty much guarantees we'll be constantly ingesting them.

Yup, we're basically at the point where antibiotics are useless because the pharmaceutical companies won't develop new ones (not enough money in it)

Conspiracy theory detected. Yes, there are more antibiotics out there, but it's insanely difficult to find any that humans can safely ingest. We're running out of the safe ones and increasingly being forced to use antibiotics discovered long ago that were shelved due to too many risks involved in any hypothetical treatment. We're playing with fire, essentially.

So congratulations to everyone who just asked for pills for their coughs (that weren't strep). You've fucked us all.

Clueless practitioners and lazy agribusiness practices share the blame here.

[The Right Honourable Mlle Antéchrist]

(most people have a hard time even finishing the bottle as prescribed)

This right here is also a huge problem, along with people saving the leftovers and then popping a few whenever they're paranoid about an infection. People seem to be under the impression that antibiotics work like Tylenol -- take two with water and everything is A-ok. It's absurd.

[Ultimate Paragon]

Well, if you ever catch a superbug, you know who to blame.

[Old Viking]

I've been given 30 or more after simple dental procedures.  "Be sure to take them all."  (So I won't be sued?)  Overkill, if you'll pardon the expression.

[dpareja]

I've been given 30 or more after simple dental procedures.  "Be sure to take them all."  (So I won't be sued?)  Overkill, if you'll pardon the expression.

Here's why:

http://blog.oup.com/2011/11/antibiotics/

[Kat S.]

I work in the medical field as a paramedic, and I was told by a doctor once that we are all essentially in the "golden age" of antibiotics.  The over-use of them has led to some bacteria evolving into super-strains such as MRSA, and within this century, antibiotics may very well become ineffective.

[Søren]

At least as a microbio tech, theres little chance ill be out of a job with superbugs everywhere

[The Right Honourable Mlle Antéchrist]

At least as a microbio tech, theres little chance ill be out of a job with superbugs everywhere

Optimism in sociopathy? I like it.

[Askold]

For some doctors it was more about just simple incompetence. Back when I was in army I got sick during my leave and the doctor I met just looked around, said he didn't see anything wrong and prescribed antibiotics "just in case." Then when I went to get my prescription in the military the military doctor was shocked at such low standards for handing out antibiotics. But she did another checkup to see what else that quack had gotten wrong and it turned out I really did need antibiotics.

But yeah, for some older doctors in particular handing out antibiotics was like handing out candy. They did it if there was even a tiny chance they might be needed or sometimes when they weren't sure what medicine to give or if there even was a need for medicine.

[I am lizard]

I think what we need is 1. A way to prescribe drugs in a more precise way, possibly meds for people based on personal factors.
2. It would be cool to have the government either give inventive for companies to want to create new medicines or just make government funded labs.

[Sigmaleph]

2. It would be cool to have the government either give inventive for companies to want to create new medicines or just make government funded labs.

"You can get a patent and sell the new drug" isn't incentive enough?

[I am lizard]

2. It would be cool to have the government either give inventive for companies to want to create new medicines or just make government funded labs.

"You can get a patent and sell the new drug" isn't incentive enough?

Yeah, we need to tell them all the cool kids are doing it.

[Ironchew]

2. It would be cool to have the government either give inventive for companies to want to create new medicines or just make government funded labs.

The NIH does government-funded pharmaceutical research already.

Of course, it would help if our taxpayer-funded drugs were released as generic immediately after clinical trials, but that would make too much sense.