Now the association is asking the Food and Drug Administration to make homes safer for germs. The AMA has suffered a string of embarrassments in recent years. The AMA s latest gaffe is an effort to shift blame in the growing controversy over antibiotic resistance away from physicians who hand out antibiotic medicines like candy. It s no wonder the AMA loses thousands of members every year. The World Health Organization warned recently that bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotic medicines.
Food poisoning is already more difficult to treat.
Infections caught in hospitals, killing an estimated 88,000 annually, often resist at least one antibiotic. The bacteria streptococcus pneumoniae, the cause of most acute ear infections in U.S. children, was susceptible to all penicillins and cephalosporins until 1974. The problem of antibiotic resistance isn t new but the WHO s alarm rightly spotlights one of the major causes of the growing resistance physicians who prescribe unnecessary antibiotic drugs. WHO says haphazard prescribing causes drugs to lose effectiveness almost as quickly as they are discovered. Incredibly, the AMA urged the FDA to expedite regulation of anti-microbial consumer products such as hand lotions, soaps and body washes.