When we're sick we want a quick cure. So we go to the doctor and ask for an antibiotic.
Sometimes doctors give in to the pressure to prescribe an antibiotic, even though it's not going to work for every illness.
Every time a person takes antibiotics, sensitive bacteria are killed, but resistant germs may be left to grow and multiply. Repeated and improper uses of antibiotics are primary causes of the increase in drug-resistant bacteria, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
Americans waste money every year purchasing antibiotics to fight the common cold and other viral infections, which antibiotics cannot cure. The drugs can cure bacterial infections.
The CDC says that $1.1 billion is spent annually on unnecessary adult upper respiratory infection antibiotic prescriptions. It is estimated that more than 50 percent of antibiotics are unnecessarily prescribed.
Antibiotic resistance has been called one of the world's most pressing public health problems, and the best way to combat it, the CDC says, is not to take the medications when it's not necessary.
Antibiotic resistance is leading to higher treatment costs, longer hospital stays and unnecessary deaths. The CDC estimates that nearly 100,000 people die from infections they pick up in the hospital every year. The vast majority are caused by bacteria that have developed resistance to the antibiotics used to treat them.
Overuse of antibiotics isn't only due to people overusing them.
There's also a big problem with too many antibiotics being used in animals that are part of the food supply.
"Doctors and patients need to be much more careful about how they use antibiotics if we're going to preserve their power," said Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives for Consumers Union. "But we also need to get smart about the overuse of antibiotics in food animals. It's time to stop the daily feeding of antibiotics to healthy food animals, which makes these life-saving medications less effective for people."
Some 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used on food animals, mostly to make them grow faster or prevent disease in unsanitary conditions. As a result of large-scale use of antibiotics in livestock production, most of the bugs that are vulnerable to the antibiotics are eventually killed off, leaving behind superbugs that are immune to one or more of the drugs. These superbugs spread on the farm and beyond, contributing to antibiotic resistance in hospitals and our communities.
Antibiotic-resistant superbugs from the farm are causing serious illness and even death. Consumer Reports found in 2010 that two-thirds of the chicken samples it tested were contaminated with salmonella or campylobacter, or both, and that more than 60 percent of those organisms were antibiotic-resistant.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked drug companies and livestock growers to voluntarily eliminate growth promotion uses of antibiotics over the next three years. Consumers Union has called on the agency to restrict the use of antibiotics in food animals to the treatment of veterinarian-diagnosed sick animals only.
In June, Consumers Union launched its Meat Without Drugs campaign to encourage grocery stores to move away from selling meat and poultry raised on a steady diet of antibiotics.