bacteria become supergerms or superbugs, capable of evading any attack by drugs. They lurk particularly
in places where antibiotics are most often used, i.e. hospitals and nursing homes. According to recent
research findings, five to ten percent of all people checking into hospitals today are going to get infected
as a result of antibiotic-resistant bacteria lodging within these buildings.
Except for the sterile environment of surgery theatres, the superbugs can be found riding on dust
particles of the heating and air-conditioning systems, in bathrooms and toilets, and even in the food. They
account for most of the deaths in hospitals today. The superbugs “choose” those patients whose immune
systems have already been impaired through sickness, injury, surgery, and/or previous encounters with
antibiotics. In healthy people with a strong immune system, these bugs can live on their skin or in their
noses without infecting them. In other words, under normal circumstances, we can live with the bugs
without ever getting infected and, even if we did get infected, our body would deal with them effectively
while becoming immune to them. However, this natural resistance to the bugs decreases drastically with
the first course of antibiotics taken for a simple infection.
Because of the excessive use of antibiotics inside and outside of hospitals, antibiotic-resistant
organisms have now become the most common cause of infection. To make matters worse, in many
countries people can now acquire antibiotics over the counter. Since precise dosage depends on the
individual and the potency of the infection, and since there is no clear time limit to the number of courses
a person may require to kill all the germs, antibiotics can never be considered “safe.” Interrupted intake or
too low a drug dose can encourage the growth of resistant bacteria, which may allow them to be passed on
to other people as well. This may increase the risk of infection for those who are near a person who takes
antibiotics and may explain why infection is higher in families where they have been used before.
However, to become infected, other predisposing factors must be in place, such as poor diet and
inadequate personal hygiene.
Indiscriminate use of antibiotics seems to be doing more damage than we can even begin to
understand. Antibiotics are among the most powerful immune-suppressants that exist. Most people who
are ill and die don’t actually die from their diseases. They die from opportunistic bacterial infections that
invade while their immune systems are depleted. This applies to cancer, AIDS, and most other so-called
“killer diseases.” Autopsies revealed that many of the patients who died from an “AIDS” disease had
never actually been infected with HIV but were killed by antibiotic-resistant superbugs. These bugs cause
similar symptoms to the ones considered AIDS diseases. It is difficult to determine how many millions of
AIDS victims are actually victims of antibiotic–resistant bacteria. (Also see chapter 12.)
Antibiotics Can Cause Asthma in Children
Many of you may wonder why so many children develop asthma at a very early age. Now "CHEST.”
the journal of the American College of Chest Physicians, shed some light on this phenomenon. It
published a study conducted by researchers at University of Manitoba and McGill University in Montreal,
which links childhood asthma to the use of antibiotics. The researchers showed that using antibiotics in
the first year of life may double a child's risk of contracting asthma by age 7. They examined a
prescription database that included information on 13,116 children and compared incidence of asthma
with a variety of risk factors that besides antibiotics included, gender, maternal asthma history, living
location, neighborhood income, the presence of pets in the home and the number of siblings at the age of
seven.
The higher the number of antibiotic treatments, the higher the incidence of asthma, according to the
study. The researchers also found that 87 percent of children who had received antibiotics were treated for
respiratory tract infections. However, to be sure the increased incidence of asthma in young children