It has been quite a while since I took microbiology. I have forgotten a lot of the details, but I believe the following is accurate.

Drug resistance that affects patients locally is of local origin. It does not just come from farm animals. We should be trying to decrease the amount of antibiotics given to farm animals here and abroad, but that is not a good reason to avoid trying to minimize the overuse of antibiotics in human patients.

I am obviously not familiar with the research on this, but why should we believe that use of antibiotics in humans, affecting bacteria that appear to thrive in humans, does not by pass a lot of the defenses of the human body? While the scale of farm bred resistant bacteria is much larger than in humans, the specificity of the human bred resistant bacteria should be of concern. This, if my reasoning is correct, suggests that the use in humans would have a greater effect on the incidence of resistant bacteria in humans. Or, at least a significant effect.

I would not take the position that one is good, while the other is bad. Both need to be addressed. Would you want to be treated by a physician, who feels it is appropriate to treat viral infections with antibiotics? What other misinformation is there in his/her head?

We do not need evidence of harm to stop using a treatment, we need evidence of benefit to advocate for treatment. Too much of medicine does not have any evidence of benefit. This is bad medicine.

You stated earlier, Yet, to my knowledge, there has never been a direct dna link between resistant strains and their use in humans or a human source.

At some point I will have to look for some research on this. Do you know of any review papers that look at a lack of evidence of resistance developing in a human population? Or some suggestions of key words for a PubMed search? I always have problems with these lack of benefit searches.

you are right there is no requirement about addressing the issue as a function of volume. but lets put it into perspective. 80% of antibiotic/antiviral production is given to animals. there are 2.5 billion ducks in china alone which receive Tamiflu daily. compare that with the author’s issue of about the 100 residents of a nursing home who may receive the same drug (even inappropriately). Stopping all antibiotic/antiviral use in humans will not change the probability of resistant bugs if it is still used in agriculture. on the other hand, stopping all use in agriculture has a much higher probability of stopping resistance regardless what is done in the human population.
thinking that this is a problem for the health care industry to solve is naive and arrogant. for at least 20 years we have been hearing the experts pontificate about overuse of human antibiotic usage, yet not a peep about the actual cause of resistance (as the cited article attests ). if the medical experts want to solve the problem, they can, just not in their sphere of influence.
prescribing antibiotics for viral illness is of course voodoo medicine. however, much of what the medical profession does is voodoo medicine as outcome research is in its infancy. the real question that i propose is not whether the inappropriate use of antibiotics/antivirals in human populations does any good, but rather is there any actual proof that it does any harm. if not, then the experts can stop pontificating and solve bug resistance at its source.

Yes, there are other problems with the development of resistance.

No, there is no requirement that we only address them in order of volume.

Prescribing antibiotics for viral illnesses is voodoo medicine. Encouraging tolerance of this pseudoscience is dangerous.

Congratulations to the CME sponsors, who are opposing this superstitious practice.

Yes, we should also be working to decrease the use of antibiotics in other areas. That does not mean those are the only areas that need attention.