As for back as the early 1970s doctors at the University of Copenhagen were recognizing that the repeated use of antibiotics to treat children’s ear infections led to an increased likelihood of:
They decided that such problems should be treated in other ways.10
They claimed, after much research that, ‘88 per cent of patients [with otitis] never need antibiotics.’ They had found that the frequency of recurrence of otitis media in the many children with otitis whom they were treating and who were not receiving antibiotics was low compared with those who were receiving antibiotics, who commonly had another ear infection within a month or so of the end of their course of antibiotics.
More recent research has validated the Danish viewpoint, with serious doubts being raised as to the usefulness (and wisdom) of antibiotic care of otitis.
These doubts have been regularly expressed in major medical journals such as the British Medical Journal, the Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Association, where we might expect some notice would have been taken by those responsible for the health of our children.11,12
The American researchers stated, ‘Recurrence rates were significantly higher in the antibiotic treated group [of children] than in the placebo group [those receiving dummy medicines].’ In fact, the children receiving antibiotics were between 200 and 600 percent more likely to have recurrence of the ear infection compared with children receiving no antibiotic treatment at all – whose own immune systems were dealing with the infections.
In 1981 a study was performed involving over 170 children with otitis. All the patients were given the usual painkilling and decongestant medicines; some were then also prescribed antibiotics, others also had both antibiotics and surgery (myringotomy – where the ear drum is punctured to release fluids which are pressing on it), while others had this form of surgery but were not prescribed antibiotics.
THE RESULTS?
There was no difference at all between any of the groups of children as far as
There was no difference at all whether antibiotics were given or not!
The same researchers looked at the problem again in 1985, this time involving nearly 5,000 children with otitis.13
This time they found that 90 percent of the children recovered, without any problems, without antibiotics, only having painkillers and decongestants to ease the symptoms while they recovered on their own.
So we see that as long ago as the late seventies and early eighties reputable scientific evidence existed showing that children who had antibiotics for middle ear infections usually did not benefit from them and were more likely to get another infection soon, compared with children not given antibiotics.
SUMMARY
Antibiotic Misuse
After confirming their belief that bacteria possess remarkable abilities to mutate and defend themselves, something we can do little about at this stage, Professor French and Emeritus Professor Phillips of the Department of Microbiology at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, are scathing in their comments as to factors we could do something about, including the wrong use of antibiotics:14
Antibiotic misuse is common. Studies have shown that up to 70 per cent of treatment courses are ‘unnecessary’ or ‘inappropriate’; Therapy is often unnecessarily prolonged … physicians are often poorly informed about the use of antibiotics and may obtain most of their information from pharmaceutical companies.
They also condemn the widespread and apparently haphazard use of antibiotics in animal farming as a cause of the spread of resistance.
Aside from these elements of overuse, misuse, abuse of (and sometimes failure to use) antibiotics, the particular situations which occur in hospitals are a key factor in the evolution of resistant strains.
What we are seeing is an approach to treating infection which actually makes greater infection and general disease more likely. This approach calls into question the ability of those responsible for our health to think more than a few days’ hence, since the prospects it produces of untreatable superinfections becoming rampant in the community, as well as in hospitals, is too frightening to contemplate. And, being too frightening to contemplate, it is not thought about – it is left as something which will be dealt with when it happens.
Unfortunately for the general population, it is already happening.
It is not as though warning bells have not been ringing for years: