TOO QUICK WITH THE PEN: Physicians under pressure to solve every medical problem are often too ready to write prescriptions.

Is Medicine Making Us Sick?

In 1020 the Persian Muslim physician Avicenna theorized in The Canon Of Medicine that infection was caused by foreign earthly bodies. Another three hundred years later Ibn Khatima hypothesized that contagious diseases were caused by these same foreign bodies.

Despite this early recognition, it wasn't until 1676 that Anton van Leeuwenhoek saw bacteria for the first time using a single-lens microscope. It took another three hundred years before antibiotics, drugs which kill bacteria, came into widespread use. Since then, medical knowledge of bacteria has grown rapidly, yet only recently have medical researchers come to recognize that antibiotics not only kill bad germs, but often kill important bacteria our bodies need to maintain themselves.

Often our bodies relationship with bacteria is too complex to simply label one bacteria good and another bad. The same bateria in our mouths that cause tooth decay also play an important role in preventing strep throat and pneumonia. As evidence of such good germs continues to grow, the use of germs to combat illness, known as Probiotics, is being increasingly talked up by medical researchers.

Research has already shown that excessive use of antibiotics may result in strains of bacteria that are resistent to antibiotics. Now medical science is learning that the problems may be worse than anticipated. The same antibiotics used to protect us from malicious infection may be killing the very germs needed to keep us healthy. Despite these clear health warnings, doctors under pressure from patients unwilling to wait out an illness, continue to write more prescriptions for antibiotics.

While doctors are responsible for the excessive number of antibiotic prescriptions, patients and a pharmaceutical industry that spends billions on advertising to promote the use of pills over natural cures must accept an equal share of the blame.

While Probiotics shows promise, the science is still in its infancy and much more research is needed. Unless physicians, consumers, and business begin to act more responsibly we may find ourselves in a world of antibiotic bacteria that can't be treated without stripping ourselves of all germs then attempting to replace the good ones with yet another cocktail of drugs.