Sherrod Brown: “we in Congress cannot go home to our districts and say we have taken the steps necessary to prepare for future…”

“we in Congress cannot go home to our districts and say we have taken the steps necessary to prepare for future bioterrorist attacks unless and until we confront the issue of antibiotic resistance. The links between antibiotic resistance and bioterrorism are clear. Antibiotic resistant strains of anthrax and other microbes are among the most lethal of biological weapons, and they are a reality. There are published reports of an anthrax strain engineered by Russian scientists to resist the penicillin and tetracycline classes of antibiotics. We can only assume that anthrax and other lethal agents will be engineered to resist new antibiotics like Cipro. Antibiotic resistance is significant in other important ways. Overuse and misuse of antibiotics will render most microbes resistant to our current stockpile of drugs, potentially leaving the Nation poorly prepared in the event of biological attacks. To some extent this is a vicious cycle. Bioterrorist threats can lead to overuse of current antibiotics, which in turn render these antibiotics less effective against the lethal agents used in bioterrorism. Look at Cipro, for example. Widespread use of Cipro, a broad-spectrum antibiotic, would kill bacteria that are susceptible to Cipro. The bacteria that are not killed will be those that evolve resistance to Cipro. Those Cipro resistant bacteria then flourish unchecked unless an even stronger antibiotic is available to kill them.”