Two decades ago, health pioneers warned the world about the deadly effects of overuse of antibiotics. In the past few years, we have seen allopathic medications creating bacteria that are completely resistant to all forms of medicine known to doctors. Are we seeing a new age where otherwise healthy people will die of once-common ailments?
By James Spounias
Antibiotic resistance is in the news again, but there’s nothing new about this pervasive problem. In the Feb. 26, 2001 edition of The Spotlight, Tom Valentine warned about the danger of antibiotics in America’s food supply, predicting that “antibiotic ‘wonders’ may be turning into a terrible health catastrophe, as greed and abuse provoke a serious ‘counter-revolution’ by pathogenic bacteria. Today virtually every public health institution is wary that antimicrobial resistance is a problem of ‘growing urgency.’ ”
The galling aspect of Valentine’s story was that antibiotics were not used for the health of animals but rather to fatten them up so they will fetch more money. The fatter the animal, the more money big agriculture gets, health be damned.
Valentine chastised big agriculture, big pharma, and do-nothing federal agencies for allowing this practice, without any concern for the health and welfare of the American people.
Valentine quoted the Union of Concerned Scientists, who issued a stern warning: “Tetracycline, penicillin, erythromycin, and other antimicrobials that are important in human use are used extensively in the absence of disease for nontherapeutic purposes in today’s livestock production. Cattle, swine, and poultry are routinely given antimicrobials throughout much of their lives.”
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While the prospect of antibiotic resistance has been reported for a long time, alarm bells should now be ringing loudly, not just every time someone is said to have died of “antibiotic” resistance.
Is it any surprise that big agriculture, big pharma, and government ignore the obvious except when they desire to promote some other agenda?
Sixteen years after Valentine’s Spotlight article, National Public Radio (NPR) reported, on Dec. 22, 2016, that more antibiotics are being used in agriculture, in spite of the marketing pitches of restaurants and food companies pledging to sell animal products with minimal or no antibiotics.
NPR reported: “The FDA and other public health agencies have been pushing farmers to rely less on these drugs. Heavy use of antibiotics both in human medicine and in agriculture has led to the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria, complicating the task of treating many infections.”
Let’s get this straight: State and federal agencies have conducted SWAT team raids on raw-food providers, vitamin sellers, and medical professionals practicing alternative medicine, but somehow can’t “push” farmers (i.e., big agriculture) to use fewer or no antibiotics, which they know are putting the nation’s health at risk?
Such wimpy sentiment would be comical were the health of Americans not in peril. One case in September 2016, involving the death of a Reno, Nev. woman, who passed away due to antibiotic resistance, received national attention, but not without an agenda.
The unnamed woman’s case was reported in the Jan. 13 Centers for Disease Control Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which noted that the patient had Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bug that is often implicated in urinary tract infections and is in a class of bacteria known as carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which is considered highly resistant.
Doctors in Reno stated the patient’s infection was resistant to 14 different antibiotics, and samples sent to the CDC in Atlanta showed resistance to 26 antibiotics.
Dr. Alexander Kallen of the CDC stated: “I think it’s concerning. We have relied for so long on just newer and newer antibiotics. But obviously, the bugs can often [develop resistance] faster than we can make new ones.”
With all due respect, “newer and newer antibiotics” are not the solution, as we in the sane health movement have been warning for decades.
It’s also worth noting that because the patient had traveled to India and received medical care there, the CDC’s handwringing involved mention of the need to find out where patients had traveled and whether they’ve been hospitalized abroad.
How curious, given the fact that antibiotic resistance is anything but a “foreign” problem.
The unstated agenda of keeping more extensive track of Americans via microchips or other high-tech means will be seeded into the subconscious part of American “memory” as necessary to thwart the spread of superbugs.
James Spounias is the president of Carotec Inc., originally founded by renowned radio show host and alternative health expert Tom Valentine.
