Of antibiotics and globalisation - The Economist, 1/8/09


This article suggests a link between protectionism and antibacterial drug resistance.

From the article:

"Consumption of these drugs varies strikingly across Europe, with Greeks, the heaviest users, taking three times as many as the Dutch, who use the fewest. Rather like trade protection, the popping of an antibiotic offers false comfort to individuals. In an anonymous 2008 survey, Greek paediatricians said that 85% of parents demanded antibiotics for children with the common cold virus. As with political debates over free trade, some people appear to suffer from a corrosive lack of trust when the authorities tell them that they are demanding the wrong thing. Even when told that antibiotics cannot fight viruses, 65% of Greek parents in the survey insisted they did until their doctors gave in.

Scientists talk of a broad north-south divide in Europe, with the Dutch, Germans, Scandinavians and Baltics consuming few antibiotics, but lots being guzzled in the Mediterranean. The main users are Greece, Cyprus, France and Italy, with Spain almost as high once illicit sales without a prescription are counted. Just as with trade barriers, pill-popping has bad side-effects. For example, in most north European countries, penicillin can deal with a common nasty, streptococcus pneumonia in all but 5% of cases. But in high antibiotic consumers like Cyprus, France and Spain, more than a quarter of cases do not respond to penicillin."

Further,

"... many experts come back to levels of anxiety, and intolerance for uncertainty, as a key driver of antibiotic demand. And this may explain one final correlation. A Eurobarometer poll last year asked Europeans whether globalisation offered an opportunity for economic growth. The map of the results is remarkably similar to the map of antibiotic consumption. Compare countries that use the most antibiotics with those most sceptical of the benefits of globalisation. Four of the top five match; and, at the other end of the scale, six of the bottom ten match. (America, a place addicted to interventionist medicine, would be near the top of an EU chart for antibiotic use: it is also a country currently wrestling with strong protectionist instincts.)"