Forget about preparing for zombie outbreaks. Well, not completely, for obvious reasons. The obvious reasons are that I believe it’s only a matter of time before 28 Days Later becomes a reality, but it’s not worth the energy worrying about. Instead, we should all worry about “the end of modern medicine” as we know it. Increasing antibiotic resistance means not being able to treat what we consider today to be regular, run of the mill infections. It means all surgery, c-sections, cancer treatments, and transplants become potentially lethal.

An article in The Guardian notes:

Each year about 700,000 people around the world die due to drug-resistant infections including tuberculosis, HIV and malaria. If no action is taken, it has been estimated that drug-resistant infections will kill 10 million people a year by 2050.

Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke recently at a symposium at Harvard Business School. He says the spread of antibiotic resistance is caused by several things:

Rampant overprescribing, to the widespread use of the drugs to promote livestock growth, and to the relative trickle of new drugs being developed as possible replacements…

The greatest antibiotic use — 70 percent — is in livestock, and more than half of that isn’t because the animals are sick, but for “growth promotion” in crowded settings….

The slow pace of drug development is largely due to poor economic incentives. Antibiotics tend to be inexpensive and taken by patients for a relatively short time, so there is less demand for them than for drugs for chronic conditions. Further, new antibiotics are used more sparingly so they will remain effective when resistance develops to other drugs, a strategy that, while sound from a public health standpoint, does not boost profits.

Drug companies, eager to unethically make as much money as possible, are in on the 28 Days Later plot. Oops, I mean drug companies should reconsider their strategy because if everyone dies no one is going to buy their drugs anyway.

On an more uplifting note, Halloween is coming up! This is a good time for everyone to watch or re-watch 28 Days Later, as well as the darker sequel 28 Weeks Later (or your favorite zombie-pandemic movie). Just be careful you don’t watch 28 Days instead, which I have accidentally done before.