Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues

by Martin J. Blaser

In this sense, people who use a public good but don’t give sufficiently, or who add to the common expense, may be considered “cheaters”; they benefit but do not pay their fair share of the enterprise.

This is, sadly, lost on people living in fear of changes and necessary precautions.

Simply put, the penalty for cheating must be sufficiently high that cheating is disadvantageous, so that cheaters don’t triumph. If there were no consequences, more people would speed when they drive. Penalties work.

Agreed

The stonewalling defies reason and represents the kind of handsoff libertarianism that is eroding our public health.

And it’s getting worst.

The antibiotic oxytetracycline—closely related to a form of tetracycline widely used in people—and streptomycin are even used on organic apples and pears to combat fire blight, a bacterial disease of fruit trees. The use of such drugs does not have to be divulged. You probably never imagined that produce labeled organic could contain antibiotics.

So, glyphosate is not the only problem to be aware of.

Drug-resistant bacteria also end up in fertilizer and soil, further contributing to the reservoir of resistance in our ecosystem.

Boy, I’m glad I stopped adding animal manure to my garden years ago.

But that explanation fails to account for the allergies and hay fever often associated with asthma.

I need to learn more about this.

These include our old friend the hygiene hypothesis, viruses, vitamin D deficiency, and antibodies resulting from drinking cow’s milk.

Been off cow’s milk for decades.

allergic rhinitis,

I have this problem.