Dear Secretaries Sebelius and Vilsak,
I am calling on you to take immediate, emergency action to save our antibiotics. This includes ending the dissemination of antibiotics to healthy food animals, and reducing overuse in medicine by holding doctors and hospitals accountable for their prescribing patterns.
Antibiotic-resistance is a real, growing problem. Infections that were easily treated with antibiotics 50 years ago can now result in serious illness and death. For thousands of victims, the post-antibiotic world is already here.
The routine feeding of antibiotics to food animals creates drug-resistant superbugs, which can spread to humans through store-bought meat and the environment. And the overuse of antibiotics in clinics and hospitals, along with poor procedures to prevent the spread of hospital-acquired infections, adds to the problem.
We can no longer hope to "invent" our way out of this crisis. The science is harder, the results less reliable. Doctors are increasingly turning back to older, more toxic drugs as the newer ones fail.
[Your comments here]
I urge you both to take immediate steps to reduce medical overuse and eliminate ALL unnecessary use in agriculture right now, before resistant strains overwhelm us. The superbugs are already here and spreading.
Sincerely,
[Your name will go here]
