Playing Chicken With Our Antibiotics

In the meantime, the FDA is so concerned about the possibility of losing Cipro and similar drugs that it has asked pharmaceutical companies to stop selling them to poultry farmers. Bayer, which manufactures both Cipro and enrofloxacin, is contesting the idea, arguing that resistance levels have stabilized and can be managed.

The question remains: How much resistance are you willing to live with? "Most infections you get that are drug resistant came to you drug resistant," Levy says. You can do your part to halt their spread by not taking antibiotics unnecessarily and following a doctor's orders when they are prescribed. Saving pills for later, so you don't have to get a new prescription, is definitely a bad idea. "We'll be in this business for a long time to come," says Dr. Stephen Lory, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School. "We will come up with something; bacteria will become resistant. We'll come up with something new." It's the kind of contest where no matter how hard you fight, the best you can hope for is a draw.