Agribusiness, Mutant Germs, and Us
America is under assault. From coast to coast, we are being invaded by horrific, body-consuming mutants that are already destroying 65,000 American lives a year. As a Duke University scientist puts it: “This is a living, breathing problem. … It’s here. It’s arrived.”
These are not invaders from Mars but from within our own countryside. Ironically, these are mutants of our own creation, leaving America face-to-face with a spreading plague of drug-resistant germs.
For decades, we have benefited enormously from the healing wonders of antibiotics. These drugs save millions of lives that would otherwise be lost to microbial infections. But more and more of the antibiotics in America’s medical kit are proving to be ineffective against the plethora of germs that endanger us. Why? Too much of a good thing.
America has overdosed on antibiotics, using about 35 million pounds a year – so much that germs, which are savvy survivors, have rapidly been mutating to develop resistance to the drugs. Thus, drug-resistant microbes now kill more Americans than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined.
Why have we overdosed so badly? Because the bulk of the drugs used in our country do not go to protect humans but to protect the profits of agribusiness corporations! Seventy percent of antibiotics go to chickens, cows, and pigs – either as stimulants to force the animals to grow faster or to fight rampant infections largely caused by unsanitary, factory-farm practices.
This senseless profiteering at the expense of our health is insane, and there’s a push in Congress to stop it. But lobbyists for Dow, Eli Lilly, Monsanto, Pfizer, and others are out to kill any reform … and to let the germs keep killing us. To support common sense, visit www.saveantibiotics.org.
A GOP Leader’s Economic Plan
Those who say that Republican Congress critters are just a gaggle of naysaying boneheads with no economic plan of their own have not been listening to John Linder.
This Georgia right-winger is irked that America’s food stamp program will grow to more than $60 billion this year. “This is craziness,” Linder barked to a New York Times reporter. “We’re at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government.”
Comfortable? When was the last time this pampered lawmaker experienced the “comforts” of the food stamp life? Linder’s been “living off the government” for 18 years, but at the high end – drawing $174,000 a year in pay, plus subsidized health care and a fat pension.
So what’s his economic plan? “You improve the economy by lowering taxes,” he explains. That’s his whole plan!
Perhaps this multimillionaire has forgotten that Washington tried that plan throughout the last decade – a decade in which there was no net-job creation, wages plummeted, middle-class incomes went down, health care costs soared, housing prices tumbled, and millions of families fell into poverty.
So that “subset of people” on food stamps whom Linder denigrates are actually his own spawn! The food stamp program has had to grow because the tinkle-down economy that he pushed wrecked America’s middle class.
Indeed, talk about a subset, there are now some 6 million Americans who are living entirely on food stamps – they’ve lost their jobs and have no other income. That’s one in every 50 of us, and the number continues to grow rapidly.
Linder and his ilk have not hesitated to throw hundreds of billions of our tax dollars at failed Wall Street bankers. But he would take the food out of the mouths of people in real need. That’s not a plan; it’s a scandal.
This article appears in February 12 • 2010.