Pharmaceutical drugs are used to combat bacterial infections in humans and animals, but over the past decades have been widely overprescribed.
For example, viral infections cannot be treated with antibiotics, yet many have been prescribed antibiotics for a cold or the flu — both of which are viral.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 30% of the 269 million antibiotic prescriptions written in 2017 were unnecessary.
Antibiotics are also routinely used for growth promotion in livestock and are promoted by pharmaceutical companies as a means of preventing disease in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) where illnesses spread quickly.6 Unfortunately, fear is a powerful way to sway and distort reality and ultimately limit the freedom to make choices based on truth.
According to the CDC, “Resistant bacteria are more common in settings where antibiotics are frequently used: health care settings, the community and food animal production.” Despite the number of prescriptions written each year, the majority of antibiotics used in the U.S. are found in industrial agriculture....read more>>>...
