Barack Obama, the man who gained office for his first term running on a platform for change, has become noted for his wait-and-see approach during his second term.
There are at least three instances--Syria, the Ebola virus cases and the resistance to antibiotics program that critics say doesn't go far enough. We'll leave out for now his perpetual stalling on the now infamous KXL pipeline project.
While most at the moment are focused on the Ebola outbreak, resistance to antibiotics, according to sources familiar with the latest reports, last year in the U.S. alone was responsible for 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths.
One of the critics' major concerns is the rampant and some claim excessive use of antibiotics in farming and live stock feed.
Much of the use goes to preventing rather than treating disease in live stock, a fact many claim leads to creating antibiotic resistant bacteria.
There is little doubt antibiotics get over used in treating humans, though not all the fault rests with medical practitioners. The public must bear its complicity since much of the public demands the medications for infections that antibiotics don't and won't help like viral colds.
Lawyers and insurance companies also contribute mightily to the problem as these people have input to so-called community standards. Medical providers are often put on the defensive not just for what they do do but also for what they don't.
Prescribing antibiotics for routine, non-contaminated wound repairs has become almost standard practice owing to push back fears. Infected wounds if they become complicated often bring with them lawsuits in what might be every trial lawyer's dream in America, the most litigation filing society on the planet.
If you don't think lawyers and litigation is more about the money and less about safety and privacy, you're not familiar with California's Prop.46 on the ballot in the upcoming election.
Remember, California for all its wackiness is often a trendsetter in many areas.
Prop. 46 if approved would create the first law in the United States to require the random drug testing of physicians and health care providers.
It would increase the state's cap on non-economic damages that can be assessed in medical negligence lawsuits to over $1 million from the current cap of $250,000. It will increase the cost of medical care, decrease access and in some instances threaten patient privacy.
Consumers, taxpayers and patients will pick up the tab and California healthcare providers and pharmacists will be forced to refer to a massive statewide data base filled with each person's personal medical prescription history without regard to patient privacy, sort of a California version of NASA.
There's yet another side to this as noted here.
For the past year, the fate of antibiotics R&D at AstraZeneca AZN.LN -0.16% has been uncertain. The drug maker, which possesses what is generally regarded as having the strongest antibiotics pipeline in the pharmaceutical industry, indicated that spending on this area would be reduced as part of a larger cutback and strategic refocusing. Ever since, speculation has grown that antibiotics may be abandoned altogether.
Now, an unconfirmed report suggests AstraZeneca may, in fact, be ready to walk away from the field.
Any move by AstraZeneca will be closely watched because of the timing – public health officials, notably the World Health Organization, have been warning about the growing threat of resistance to existing antibiotics and the need to develop new products. Last month, for instance, the Obama administration released a game plan for combating antibiotic resistance. The pharmaceutical industry, however, has largely drifted away from research into this area.t. man hatter
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