Imagine this: You're having a normal day until you gradually notice a little sore throat and begin to feel a tad feverish. You assume you must have the flu. You go to bed and rest. The next day, you can barely breathe, and you rush to the hospital. Things go quickly downhill and soon, you're trying to write down your last wishes – your body riddled with an aggressive infection – while the doctors put you in a coma to save your life. You may or may not make it. Sounds like something out of a made-for-TV script, right?
Now consider: The U.S death rate from the staph infection MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) surpassed the death rate from AIDS way back in 2005.
And MSRA is just one of the antibiotic resistant diseases that can infect people. Others include food-borne bacteria such as e-coli, salmonella, and still others that are associated with poverty and crowding, such as tuberculosis and typhoid.
These "superbugs" I'm concerned with today are the ones associated with food and farms and – though the drug industry and some farmers won't agree – the evidence is overwhelming that they are at least partially a result of dosing farm animals with subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics added to their feed.
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