Antibiotics a treasure feds debate how to save

WASHINGTON -- The ad shows a tantalizing glimpse of gold inside a treasure chest. No, not a pirate's doubloon: The message is that antibiotics are one of the nation's great treasures and it's everybody's responsibility -- not just doctors' -- to make sure they keep working.

With more bacteria becoming immune to leading antibiotics, worried federal scientists are preparing new measures to try to save the drugs -- ranging from nationwide ad campaigns that will urge patients to do their part to rules that may make it tougher to sell antibiotics for livestock.

"The problem of resistance is here to stay. Our hope is that it becomes a problem that everyone is familiar with, and knows how to take steps to minimize its impact," says Dr. J. Todd Weber of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Antibiotic resistance is basic evolution: Anytime the drugs are used, survivor germs can emerge stronger, and spread. That's why antibiotics are supposed to be used judiciously, picking the best one for each bacterial infection -- and not using them against viruses that they cannot fight.

Scientists once thought the best approach to stem resistance was teaching doctors to prescribe more carefully, such as refusing parents' demands for antibiotics that little Johnny's earache doesn't need.

But there are many additional contributors: cross-border supergerms from developing countries where the drugs sell without a prescription; antibiotics given to animals that potentially can pass resistant germs through food; horticulturists who apply them to fruit trees, even wilting orchids.

No leftovers

And patients play a big role. "Every medicine cabinet in this country has leftover antibiotics," laments Lester Crawford, the Food and Drug Administration's acting chief.

Taken as prescribed, there should be no leftovers. Yet patients often stop the pills early and then share leftovers with relatives or save them, wrongly, for the next sniffles. Improper patient use of one antibiotic, Cipro, made headlines during last fall's anthrax attacks -- when some people never exposed to the germ used it out of fear, while others who needed it didn't take a full course.

On June 26, the government will hold the first of planned yearly meetings to assess efforts to stem antibiotic resistance.

Officials are planning new attacks. Among them:

A big focus on consumers. The FDA's treasure-chest ads, to begin running in newspapers and magazines later this year, will be accompanied by a question-and-answer brochure that doctors can keep in their offices. Additional CDC ads should begin in October.

New labels for antibiotics, being finalized, will remind doctors to prescribe them only against bacterial infections.

FDA is debating how new antibiotics could be tested more efficiently, to encourage now-lagging development of supergerm killers.

And this summer, FDA will issue rules requiring proof that new animal antibiotics won't endanger people by spurring germs immune to human drugs.