NOW that Congress has pushed through its complicated legislation
to reform the health insurance system, it could take one more
simple step to protect the health of all Americans. This one
wouldn't raise any taxes or make any further changes to our
health insurance system, so it could be quickly passed by
Congress with an outpouring of bipartisan support. Or could it?
More than 30 years ago, when I was commissioner of the United
States Food and Drug Administration, we proposed eliminating the
use of penicillin and two other antibiotics to promote growth in
animals raised for food. When agribusiness interests persuaded
Congress not to approve that regulation, we saw firsthand how
strong politics can trump wise policy and good science.
Even back then, this nontherapeutic use of antibiotics was being
linked to the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria
that infect humans. To the leading microbiologists on the
F.D.A.'s advisory committee, it was clearly a very bad idea to
fatten animals with the same antibiotics used to treat people.
But the American Meat Institute and its lobbyists in Washington
blocked the F.D.A. proposal.
In 2005, one class of antibiotics, fluoroquinolones, was banned
in the production of poultry in the United States. But the total
number of antibiotics used in agriculture is continuing to grow.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 70 percent of
this use is in animals that are healthy but are vulnerable to
transmissible diseases because they live in crowded and
unsanitary conditions.
In testimony to Congress last summer, Joshua Sharfstein, the
principal deputy commissioner of the F.D.A., estimated that
90,000 Americans die each year from bacterial infections they
acquire in hospitals. About 70 percent of those infections are
caused by bacteria that are resistant to at least one powerful
antibiotic.