Professor Urges Cutbacks on Antibiotic Use

In response to both an ongoing war on germs and the new war on terrorism, a Harvard School of Public Health professor has said the U.S. has gone too far in its use of antibiotic drugs and should moderate its outlook on public health issues.

According to Kimberly Thompson, who published a book earlier this month called Overkill: How Our Nation’s Abuse of Antibiotics and Other Germ Killers is Hurting Your Health and What You Can Do About It, her work “puts the public back in public health” by making people more aware of how they can assess and respond to risks from germs as well as bioterrorism.

“People are very worried about bioterrorism these days, but they’re not thinking about everyday germs,” said Thompson, who wrote the book in collaboration with health writer Debra Fulgham Bruce.

Overkill tries to explain germs, antibiotics and bioterrorism risks to everyday Americans.

“We are now in the age of miracles,” Thompson said. “We are pursuing all the benefits of antibiotics without worrying about the risks. Today must be the age of risk management.”

She said she wants her book to serve as both a warning and a tool for people to evaluate how to deal with these risks.

“Patients are dying with infections we cannot treat at a major cost to hospitals, which is a big problem from a public health standpoint,” said Thompson, who is an assistant professor of risk analysis and decision science.

She said current government funding is aimed only at doctors, rather than at the general population.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has mounted a huge campaign to prevent antimicrobial resistance totally aimed at health care providers,” Thompson said.

In recent years, public health officials have stressed that bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, in part because of everyday exposure to low-level antibiotics in anti-bacterial soap.

“Always use antibacterial soap after handling raw meat, but you don’t need it every time you wash your hands,” Thompson said. “The most important thing is the physical act of washing your hands.”

But people are not just worried about germs, Thompson said. Thus, the book’s epilogue offers suggestions for how to respond to a bioterrorist attack.

Millions of Americans responded to anthrax scares earlier this year by taking powerful antibiotics.

Thompson said people should respond to the threat of terrorist attack in ways that are very different from a typical public health crisis.

“Whereas for an accident, you would rush to a hospital,” she said, “in an attack you may want to hole up in your house because the diseases are so contagious.”