Tom Philpott at Mother Jones brings to attention the new UK government study on antibiotic failure. The study, like the headline is a stunner. It reiterates the causes of our antibiotic crisis as the 1) over prescription of antibiotics to humans 2) the massive use of prophylactic antibiotics in livestock feed. But, don't be fooled, with 80% of antibiotic use in US going to raising livestock the causes do not have equal influence.
And in a new report, the UK government has come out with some startling global projections. Currently, the report finds, 700,000 people die annually from pathogens that have developed resistance to antibiotics, a figure the report calls a "low estimate." If present trends continue, antibiotic failure will claim 10 million lives per year by 2050, the report concludes. That's more carnage than what's currently caused by cancer and traffic accidents combined.
The economic toll will also be mind-boggling. By 2050, the report estimates, antibiotic resistance will be incurring $8 trillion in annual expenses globally. That's equal to nearly half of the total output of the US economy in 2014—an enormous hemorrhaging of global resources.
The report, the first in an ongoing review on antibiotic resistance ordered by British Prime Minister David Cameron last summer, focuses narrowly on impacts. Future ones will discuss potential solutions. Here's a start: Convince the US meat industry, which now sucks in 80 percent of the antibiotics consumed in the country, to wean itself from it reliance on routine antibiotic use.
With livestock production a
leading cause of climate change AND a leading cause of antibiotic resistance; what could be more simple than to reduce meat consumption as a solution to two of our species most dangerous crisis?