Can Prayer Replace Antibiotics?
Eric Nelson notes at washingtontimes.com the number of people who die every year from infections that antibiotics couldn't cure -- 23,000, a figure released by the CDC last week. These people die each year from drug-resistant germs, what's called "antimicrobial resistance," a scary trend that's getting worse as bacteria continue to build up resistance to antibiotics. As Nelson reports, "Common infections could become deadly, and diseases that were once curable will become more difficult and more expensive to treat." Where is all this antimicrobial resistance coming from? Agriculture, where farmers feed these drugs to chickens who are cooped up together to prevent them from getting sick and passing it on, or to plump them up, to doctors who prescribe it for aggressive parents who think antibiotics cure a cold (they don't; colds are viral), to the numbers of prescriptions being written for ear infections and the flu and other illnesses that te...