Antibiotics: are they good or bad?
Period 5
Pros
-benefits animal welfare
-diseases can be treated and prevented
-banning antibiotics may hinder the ability protect the animal and prevent disease
-benefits food safety
-when animal illness increases, so does human illness
-animals that don’t show illness are more likely to produce food borne illness later
-skipping food safety processes may cause food borne illness
-improves meat production
-banning antibiotics would raise the cost of production
-banning antibiotics would put the public at risk
-treat many infections
-easy to administer-either by mouth or injection
-cost effective
-few to no side effects
-help animals absorb and process food
-promotes growth in animals
-keeps groceries cheaper
Cons
-also kill bacteria that is good for you
-not taking all of the antibiotic leaves bacteria that can become resistant
-taking too many antibiotics will allow the bacteria to become resistant and evolve
-can't kill viruses
-each antibiotic only kills certain bacterial infections
-may leave resistant bacteria behind in animal meat
-some gene transfer is initiated by antibiotics
-giving antibiotics to animals makes bacteria become resistant, and rendering workers susceptible to the bacteria
-creates strains of drug resistant bacteria
-allows resistant bacteria to spread in many ways
-strains spread to humans can't be given antibiotics
-given to healthy animals
2 types of antibiotics
-bacteriocidal (kills bacteria on contact)
-bacteriostatic (keeps bacteria from growing and reproducing)
How Bacteria Become Resistant
-change structure so antibiotics don't recognize the bacteria
-enzymes and other tactics to get rid of antibiotics
-some born/made with these tactics and abilities
-some get genes from other bacterium with a code that blocks certain antibiotics
-plasmids-parts of DNA that code for resistance to antibiotics
-when the new DNA is acquired and added to the chromosome, if it is desirable it will be passed on because of natural selection through vertical transmission
-bacteria in the intestines cause infection after surgery, them being resistant will render these infections uncurable
-DNA that is acquired is added to the chromosome
-if the DNA allows the bacteria to survive, natural selection has occurred and forms resistant strains of bacteria
What are we doing to make bacteria resistant?
-misuse-not taking all the antibiotics instructed
-taking antibiotics for viruses
-using old antibiotics