It is December again, and as in all Decembers, we, as a community, begin to face the challenge of treating and guarding against those pesky winter-time illnesses. During the winter months every doctor patiently awaits the inevitable onset of hundreds of sick patients toting illnesses ranging from the common cold to strep throat. Our own Health Services is no different, and already they are surely facing the beginnings of this traditional surge.
What makes the situation on campus peculiar is not the presence of illness, but instead the way illnesses are being treated. Of late, reports of over prescription of antibiotics have begun to surface. A friend of mine, for example, recently saw Health Services for flu-like symptoms. She reported that given the negative result on every test designed to detect bacteria, and the admission that she was likely suffering from a viral illness such as the cold, Health Services still issued her a prescription for antibiotics. As the son of a doctor I know, too, that some patients even have the audacity to demand antibiotics for light sicknesses that will likely clear up anyway in a week and will, in any event, never be affected by treatment with antibiotics.
These behaviors are abuses of the worst kind. Antibiotics simply cannot treat viral illnesses. All possible theories and rationalizations as to why antibiotics might be effective against viruses have been summarily disproved. If you or I are sick from any of the thousands of viruses that cause our runny noses and sore throats, there is essentially nothing we can do beyond drinking lots of (nonalcoholic) fluids and resting. The flu, the cold, mono etc.: none of them can be treated with antibiotics and any benefits we may feel from them are only a result of the placebo effect or the rest accrued from the length of antibiotic treatment. We are attracted to antibiotics because they represent an easy, quick fix. However, the only party on campus who truly benefits from this gross violation of medical ethics is Health Services; who can, with a simple prescription, alleviate the nagging presence of hundreds of sick students.
What many students and Health Services do not realize is that behind this quick fix (as it clearly is not) are terrible and very real consequences. While we mistreat viruses with mountains of antibiotics, the true targets, bacteria, are constantly adapting in order to better cope with our modes of attack. All across the world, once benign bacterial infections such as strep have become completely resistant to antibiotics, lengthening recovery times and occasionally rendering the illnesses damaging or lethal. Penicillin, perhaps the most important discovery of the last century, is about to become obsolete because of its impotence as a result of over prescription.
But we needn’t wait for this global health crisis to reach us to feel its effects. In a relatively closed community such as Wesleyan, it is more than just a possibility that antibiotic resistant forms of our most common bacteria could surface causing dangerous and cumbersome outbreaks. Who will be to blame if they do?
Of course, it goes without saying that Health Services must alter these practices for the sake of our general health, both long term and short term. But if Health Services will not change its ways, we as students must learn to refuse antibiotics when a diagnosis does not clearly indicate that our illness is bacterial (or possibly bacterial as is the case when a doctor is suspicious of dangerous bacteria). We must stop demanding Amoxicillin and Doxycyclin of our doctors for common colds and sore throats as surely we can all agree: the reduction of the possibility of hazardous outbreaks is worth the placebo effects we feel from using antibiotics.
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