Whoa!
On your show, someone mentioned keeping
samples of antibiotics to give out to sick customs agents. This
is very bad advice. Antibiotics are prescription drugs for a
reason.
First, they can do much harm, especially if the disease
is not caused by a bacteria, i.e., a virus or nutritional
problem. Second, the antibiotics must be taken in a full dose,
and sample packages usually do not compromise a full dose. If
one only takes a sample size, they end up killing some of the
bacteria, but not all. The ones left over become antibiotic
resistant, which is not only trouble for the customs agent, it's
trouble to everyone else who contracts the disease.
For an example of the problem, observe what is happening in the prisons
of the former Soviet Union. The system ran out of money and
could not afford to give the full regimen of antibiotics to TB
victims. So they began giving partial doses. Unfortunately,
this was a big mistake. Now there are cases of T.B. organisms
that are resistant to every drug we know, and some of these
cases have occurred in the Russian communities of New York and other
large cities. The result: T.B. will spread, and it will be the
number one infectious killer in the U.S. in less than two years.
So, please make a quick statement letting your listeners know
that by handing out antibiotics, they may actually hurt others.
Thank you!
Trey
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