• Penicillin was first prescribed almost 75 years ago.

 

• Unrestrained use of antibiotics has sickened at least 2.25 million Americans each year and killed 37,000.

• MRSA and other resistant bacteria infect at least 2 million people in the U.S. annually, killing at least 23,000.

• CRE (carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae), which when it gets into the bloodstream kills almost 50 percent of hospital patients who are infected.

• At least 250,000 people per year become sickened with Clostridium difficile infections linked to antibiotic use. 14,000 will die. 

• About 80 percent of the antibiotics in the U.S. are fed to chickens, cows, and other food animals in order to prevent disease, but mostly to speed their growth and put on weight rapidly.

• In 1946 feeding antibiotics to farm animals was shown to speed their weight gain.

• In 1947 penicillin-resistant infections reported.

• American Medical Association, found that doctors who attended a one-hour session on guidelines for treating common upper-respiratory tract infections and then received feedback on their prescribing habits, cut their use of broad-spectrum antibiotics almost in half. Inappropriate prescriptions for sinus infections and pneumonia were cut by 50 to 75 percent.

• A recent study showed the doctors were more likely to prescribe needless antibiotics for viral infections toward the end of their office hours.

• Almost one in five emergency-room visits for drug side effects stem from antibiotics in children.

• Most ear infections improve on their own in two to three days even without antibiotics, especially in children two or older.

• Conjunctivitis usually stems from a virus or an allergy, not bacteria; thus antibiotics are ineffective. Even when bacteria are responsible, pinkeye usually goes away by itself within ten days.

• CRE was first reported in North Carolina in 2001. As of this year, 48 states have reported infections.

• In the 1980s, 29 new antibiotics were approved; another 23 were approved during the 1990s. However, only nine new drugs made it to market from 2000-2010.

• In 2011, the Chief Scientist for a major pharmaceutical company stated that his research group was instructed by top management to never work on any drugs that would affect a cure. Instead they were told to only work on drugs for long term treatment of chronic disease. 

Warning:

Pun Zone Ahead

• He drove his expensive car into a light pole to see how his Mercedes bends.

• Hear about the frog whose car broke down? He had to get toad. 

• Did you hear about the guy who lost his left side? It's OK, he's all right now. 

• Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

• He often broke into song, because he couldn't find the key.

• Two hats on a hat rack. One said to the other, "You stay here, I'll go on ahead."