| "'Because antimicrobial drug use in both humans and animals can contribute to the development of antimicrobial resistance, it is important to use these drugs only when medically necessary,' the FDA said in a release." This is long overdue. The FDA action is consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations in the United States and with agricultural regulations in the European Union. We have discussed the science behind this no-brainer recommendation several times here on Hacker News.[1] Yes, veterinarians may need to treat animal diseases with antibiotics. Antibiotics are in several cases "natural" substances that evolved through natural selection, mycotoxins emitted by fungi, or bacterial toxins emitted by one clade of bacteria, with the effect of killing bacteria in a world full of bacteria. The bacteria susceptible to antibiotics, in turn, have long been under selection pressure to evolve resistance to antiobiotics, as some strains of bacteria did long ago in the wild. The use of antibiotics in human medicine has revolutionized several forms of medical treatment and added millions of years of healthy life to humankind's prospects, but use of antibiotics must go hand-in-hand with other forms of infection control to minimize selective sweeps of antibiotic resistance as a trait among most harmful strains of bacteria. It's a bad trade-off to use antibiotics without veterinary indications in general animal husbandry, so this regulatory step is a step in the right direction. Meanwhile, the already established multiple-drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis are very worrisome,[2] and will have to be a focus of much research and urgent public-health campaigns. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6599040 [2] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230344420... http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news... http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of-Drug-R... http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/pdfs/RNTCP%20Response%20DR%20TB%2... |