Is Antibiotic Overuse Killing Us?
Guess who's getting 70% of the antibiotics in this country? No, not your son's constant ear infections. Chickens. That's right. Chickens And because of that,someday you may die of an infection because antibiotic-resistant bugs have become a common form of death, according to The Washington Post. Farmers feed their chickens antibiotics to cut down on infections when the chickens are all pressed together in a tight space to grow. They've also used them to make fowl grow bigger, though the government is making them cut back on that. But, as the AP reports, 2 million people a year develop serious infections -- and 23,000 die. For the first time, the CDC has estimated how many people die from drug-resistant bacteria each year — about as many as those killed annually by flu. Why? Because of the growing threat of germs that are hard to treat since they’ve become resistant to drugs. "Antibiotics like penicillin and streptomycin first became widely available...