Virtually everyone has taken antibiotics. They can be lifesavers -- and they can be useless. What are they? How are they used? And what happens as the effectiveness of antibiotics continues to decline? This examines the personal and societal implications of our planet's most important -- and frequently misused -- medications. In a question-and-answer format, it unpacks the most complicated aspects of this issue, including: How antibiotics are used...

Protect your child. Leading pediatric experts answer all your questions about reducing the risks of antibiotic overuse. "An important book for parents.the best source I have seen about the dangers of antibiotic resistance and the risks of antibiotic overuse." --Scott Dowell, M.D., M.P.H. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "Finally, a book that discusses the problem of antibiotic overuse in a readable way, combining daily experiences in pediatric...

Pyrrhic Progress analyses over half a century of antibiotic use, regulation, and resistance in US and British food production. Mass-introduced after 1945, antibiotics helped revolutionize post-war agriculture. Food producers used antibiotics to prevent and treat disease, protect plants, preserve food, and promote animals' growth. Many soon became dependent on routine antibiotic use to sustain and increase production. The resulting growth of antibiotic...

" ... Provides an overview of why and how drugs are used in the major food-producing animal industries--poultry, dairy, beef, swine, and aquaculture. The volume discusses the prevalence of human pathogens in foods of animal origin. It also addresses the transfer of resistance in animal microbes to human pathogens and the resulting risk of human disease."--Catalog description.

Uses humor in both text and illustrations to describe how antibiotics were developed and what methods were used to fight infections and disease before antibiotics were available.

Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, psychologist Tom Patterson, were vacationing in Egypt when Tom came down with a stomach bug. What at first seemed like a case of food poisoning quickly turned critical, and by the time Tom had been transferred via emergency medevac to the world-class medical center at UC San Diego, where both he and Steffanie worked, blood work revealed why modern medicine was failing: Tom was fighting one of the...