Trogolodytes heart antibiotics

Lest readers think this blog is intended to aid and abet the trogolodytes amongst us, here is a reminder from those farmers at the New York Times about the problem we face with respect to the use of antibiotics far in excess of the common good.

They begin, "The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70 percent of the antibiotics used in this country are fed to farm animals. These animals do not receive these drugs the way humans do — as discrete short-term doses. Agricultural antibiotics are a regular feed supplement intended to increase growth and lessen the chance of infection in crowded, industrial farms."

And they end, "the current practice is dangerously self-defeating: treating more and more animals with less and less effective drugs and in turn creating resistant strains of disease that persist in the soil and water. Congress should stop this now before an entire class of drugs becomes useless."

They are correct. Nature has proven its relentless ability to overcome our efforts to completely control it, and, left unchecked by sensible regulation, the industrial application of antibiotics to farm animals is doomed to failure.