Comments on: Yes, Antibiotics Used on Livestock Do Breed Drug-Resistant Bacteria That Infect Humans

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 01:39:08 +0000

@Shiva Steve Ordog: There’s no reason to jump to even more bad science and suggest switching to a plant based diet, something we are have not evolved to healthily live on. No, veganism won’t kill you, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy either.

There are plenty of ways to humanely and naturally raise animals for food.

By: Geack

Geack — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:12:08 +0000

@2. Small sample, loose study design (lots of leeway in the potential rates of noncompliance), authors themselves stated their sample was insufficiently diverse, and most importantly, their other finding was that there was no difference between the antibac soaps and regular soap.

I agree that the author should maybe provide some references for the claims, but the study you cited was a very preliminary look at the topic and basically concluded there’s no reason to use antibac soap. Plus it doesn’t have anything to do with the main point of this article, which is about antibiotic use in animal feed.

By: Joe Marfice

Joe Marfice — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:37:20 +0000

“… antibiotics in consumer products, like soaps, … help select for strains of bacteria that don’t respond to drugs.”

My understanding was that antibiotic soap was not indicated by the data as having much of an effect on MRSA. Is there research (and not just “common sense”) to the contrary?

Counterpoint to the article’s claim:
http://coldflu.about.com/od/prevention/i/antibactsoap.htm

By: Shiva Steve Ordog

Shiva Steve Ordog — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:54:33 +0000

This means that we could drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, dramatically increase food availability, and slow the mutation of superbugs by ending meat production and switching to plant based diets. Failing that, why is factory farming allowed? We, as a society, are directly subsidizing a dangerous direction. We need to change course.