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Show and Features |
Culture Watch | Question of the Week | Letters of the Week |
Traveler's Aid | Library | Host's View
 

 

Whoa!

On your show, someone mentioned keeping samples of antibiotics to give out to sick customs agents. This is very bad advice. Antibiotics are prescription drugs for a reason.

First, they can do much harm, especially if the disease is not caused by a bacteria, i.e., a virus or nutritional problem. Second, the antibiotics must be taken in a full dose, and sample packages usually do not compromise a full dose. If one only takes a sample size, they end up killing some of the bacteria, but not all. The ones left over become antibiotic resistant, which is not only trouble for the customs agent, it's trouble to everyone else who contracts the disease.

For an example of the problem, observe what is happening in the prisons of the former Soviet Union. The system ran out of money and could not afford to give the full regimen of antibiotics to TB victims. So they began giving partial doses. Unfortunately, this was a big mistake. Now there are cases of T.B. organisms that are resistant to every drug we know, and some of these cases have occurred in the Russian communities of New York and other large cities. The result: T.B. will spread, and it will be the number one infectious killer in the U.S. in less than two years.

So, please make a quick statement letting your listeners know that by handing out antibiotics, they may actually hurt others. Thank you!

Trey

 

 

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