"Genetically modified food products involve introducing antibiotic resistance genes into the crop"

Umm... no? Unless I miss my guess it usually involves introducing resistance to the herbicide Roundup, and/or introducing the genes for the bacterial insecticide BT; I can't imagine why there would be any reason to introduce genes for antibiotic resistance in a plant.

"resistant to methicillin, but can be treated with sulfa drugs, vancomycin, clindamycin, and tetracycline"

The problem is that bacteria are able to acquire multiple antibiotic resistances, sometimes through just a single mutation; a corollary of this is that once you've selected a population resistant to one antibiotic, it's correspondingly easier for them to acquire resistance to the other antibiotics you use on them in the future. "CA-MRSA [community acquired] has a greater spectrum of antimicrobial susceptibility, including to sulfa drugs, tetracyclines, and clindamycin. HA-MRSA [hospital acquired] is resistant even to these antibiotics and often is susceptible only to vancomycin." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylococcus_aureus

thanks to those of you who have already written in about this important book. I picked it up at Borders earlier this week. It's on one of those "buy one, get one half off" deals.

Buy it and read it now.

for instance, "human power" (pg 1) and I are susceptible to staph, while i never get sore throats (usually strep). about a third of us have staph aureus on our skin and it never bothers us. however if that skin is cut, the susceptible can get infected. soap, while it washes off the staph, doesn't kill it. so washing a cut doesn't help. i use bacitracin whenever i get a cut or scrape. that *does* kill staph, but as it isn't called "a toxic antibiotic" for nothing. the cut takes longer to heal. nevertheless, knowing my weakness and as general resistance is bound to increase, i use it.

Must. make. government. even bigerrrerRRR RRR RR ! ! !

We need to SUPERSIZZZE ITTTT!!!!

As massive and omnipotent as our government is, it is still way too small, apparently.

Isn't that the Lib ideal? Government will protect us from everything? IT DOES NOT WORK. Not by a long shot.

For the love of God buy a freaking history book.

I don't have time to personally educate you on the Gilded Age or the history of the robber barons or any of the other abuses of the working class that took place when our "evil" government was small and gave a freaking blank check to CEO's.

Please stop embarrassing yourself!

Google "robber baron" or go to wikipedia and look up the "Shame of the Cities."

For God's sake please educate yourself about HISTORY!

It wasnt that long ago. You need to actually read about what a "paradise" America was in the 1890-1920's before you go spouting off again and revealing just how ignorant you are.

Our Big Evil Scary Government:

Abolished Child Labor (despite people like you saying government had no "right" to do so)

Abolished slavery (again, despite your objections that our government had no authority)

Created Fair Wages & Labor (again, despite your best efforts to stop it.)

And on and on.

If "big government" did all that -- I say give me more!

Seems pretty damn good to me.

michael pollan's "omnivore's dilemma" is a great, not to mention fully engaging, book to read if you want more info on how the modern food system is contributing to and creating health problems for people and planet. it's big but a fairly easy read and i can't recommend it enough.

who walk into a feed store or who order from a veterinary or livestock supply catalog.

When I operated an animal sanctuary, most veterinarians requested that I keep antibiotics on hand and medicate preventively. It was difficult to find commercial feeds without antibiotic and other medicinal additives. I ended up having feed custom formulated and ground.

But I always had a "tank" of penicillin injectable (240 ml or 8 oz) on hand in the refrigerator. Obviously, none of the sanctuary animals were ever food bound, but the vast majority of farmers medicate as they see fit - without the oversight and specific recommendations of treating veterinarians. Factory farms are especially prone to medicate as it's difficult to stop a communicable disease in overcrowded animal housing conditions, and a veterinarian might be pesky enough to report any outbreak to the authorities.

For anyone who disagrees, just sit in on some Farm Bureau meetings and listen. Or ask how much a veterinarian farm call and subsequent treatment is compared to a tank of antibiotics.

We in the microbiology community have been screaming about these problems for years, and no one is listening. Animals are fed massive amounts of antimicrobials, which are released into the water in their waste and into the population in their products. Doctors over prescribe; patients demand antibiotics when unnecessary and even useless. Then they don't use their scrips as directed, and yes, most of the antibiotics we ingest are excreted in our urine, and enter the water, etc.

There are now multi-drug resistant versions of many organisms that we thought we had licked. MRSA, Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus (VRE), resistant Streptococcus pneumonia (and kids with impossible to treat ear infections) and resistant Gonorrhea. If you think MRSA is scary, try out multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis, which has yet to hit the U.S. in large numbers, but soon will. Our lack of care with drugs is leading to drug resistant viruses, such as HIV and influenza. We're even seeing resistant fungal infections, such as athlete's foot.

It's long past time for our legislators, our regulators, the medical system, and the lay population to step up and make changes.Unfortunately, we love our cheap animal products, we hate hearing that there isn't a pill that can fix every little sniffle we have and we're pretty damn lazy. I doubt we'll make real changes until people are more afraid of dying of infection than cancer or heart disease. Sadly, once resistance genes are in a microbial population, we can't just wish them away. It is a hell of a lot easier to prevent resistance than it is to create novel antimicrobials.

Uggh.. I'm going to go and wash my hands.