Political Quotes

“Antibiotic drugs have revolutionized human and veterinary medicines. Many diseases and infections, tuberculosis, pneumonia, typhoid, cholera, which were once difficult to treat, and often lethal, have been made readily curable by antibiotic drugs. But unfortunately, when bacteria are exposed to antibiotics, resistant strains emerge, posing a renewed threat to human health. This phenomenon makes it more difficult and vastly more expensive to treat some infections. We all know that the inappropriate use of antibiotics in human medicine has contributed to this problem. And mounting scientific evidence also shows that the routine feeding of antibiotics to healthy farm animals, nontherapeutic use, promotes the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can then be communicated to people. In recent years, the list of simple bacterial infections that are strongly resistant to several classes of antibiotics has grown dramatically. Each day that we fail to act, antibiotic resistance grows, the long-term usefulness of our antibiotics are undermined. Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to support H.R. 1771 and H.R. 3804 to address the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in human and animal medicine.”