Doctors Becoming Anti- Antibiotics
Your son has a hacking cough and you want an antibiotic to soothe it. You know colds are caused by viruses and therefore, not treatable with penicillin. But you want it, anyway. My husband, too, a dentist, sometimes prescribes antibiotics for patients when they're not really needed. But a new study has found that doctors are prescribing 'way too many antibiotics -- and sometimes even, the wrong ones. All leading to, as we know, a huge wave of drug-resistant illnesses that may someday end up killing us because the meds just won't work anymore. "Recent studies have shown that doctors are over-prescribing broad-spectrum antibiotics, sometimes called the big guns, that kill a wide swath of both good and bad bacteria in the body," according to Sumathi Reddi. But they're not against all antibiotics, it turns out. Narrow-spectrum antibiotics, like penicillin, amoxicillin and cephalexin, can usually clear up many infections, while targeting a smaller number o...