Fear of Bacteria
A report is circulating saying that ten million people are going to die in the future due to resistances against antibiotics. The number is wrong. It is grounded in the exaggeration of a British study which, in turn, is working with overstatement. Distortion has become symptomatic within this topic. An analysis.
Ten million dead. Per year. A number that frightens people. That is meant to frighten people. This many people could be dying each and every year from 2050 because of infections, including those that are resistant to treatment. This is what the British research project „Review on Antimicrobial Resistance“ claims in its final report.
The figure is not new. It was published in the Review’s first report in 2014, which prompted an immense media response. Now, the response continues. „Focus Online“, for instance, headlined: „Scientists expect millions of dead because of resistant germs. And the BBC had a caption written large on its website saying that we need a „worldwide revolution“ in order to protect ourselves against resistant germs. The „Mirror“ asserts that humans are facing an „antibiotic apocalypse“.
Is it really that bad? No, it is not.
On the one hand, journalists have misinterpreted the report. The news agency dpa, for example, wrote that the deaths are caused by „resistances against antibiotics“. This is wrong. The British scientists are talking about „antimicrobial resistances“. This term has a much broader scope. Microbes include viruses like HIV, bacteria like E.coli in the bowel, and parasites like the malaria pathogen, Plasmodium falciparum. As the scientists predict, medicines against these microbes could become ineffective because of resistance in 35 years. And cost the lives of ten million people per year.
And then there is the second mistake within the news coverage. Because the study was ordered by the British government, it is open to a certain interpretation: That the deaths of ten million people refer to Europe in particular.
Not at all: According to the prognosis nine in ten deaths will occur in Africa and Asia – countries where protection against infections is poorly developed. And a major proportion of the deaths relates to tuberculosis and malaria – diseases that threaten the poor and weak on this planet.
People, therefore, would not be dying because of the hospital germ MRSA but because of malaria and tuberculosis. Not in Europe, but in Africa and Asia. This applies to those 700,000 who are, according to the report, already dying because of resistant germs. As well as to the ten million predicted by the scientists.
Which leads us to the question: How did they come up with the number 10 million? The scientists came up with two main scenarios. The first one assumes that resistance against all germs will increase by 40 per cent – that would mean a multiplication of today’s resistance rate. In addition, the scientists assume a doubling of the infection rate in this scenario. This, too, seems generous as hygiene is constantly improving on a global scale.
The second scenario is even more unrealistic: scientists assume a resistance rate of 100 per cent. That is to say: No medicine is effective any longer against malaria and tuberculosis, HIV and MRSA. This daring prophecy contradicts biology. At this point, there is no pathogen that has even come close to developing that level of resistance.
The scientists deduced the 10 million deaths per year from these two – overstated – scenarios combined. We do not think that they are realistic.
In fact, the study and its coverage show something different: That scientists and the media have started trying to outdo each other with horror scenarios when it comes to resistance. That both of them make claims which rest upon incomplete data. That news coverage about antibiotic resistance is becoming ever more alarmist. On and on it goes, with the media trying to stir up attention for a supposedly undetected problem – which became media hype long ago.
The underlying motivation is also self-interest. Scientists want higher budgets, while the pharmaceutical industry hopes for subsidies. In the British review, pharmaceutical companies held advisory functions to the AMR team. The report concluded that each new antibiotic should be granted roughly one billion dollars in subsidies.
Critical voices often compare antibiotic resistance to climate change: Its relevance is on a similarly global scale. What a pity that they have not learned from the communication around climate change. Every single exaggeration, every single inaccuracy is being mercilessly exploited by climate change sceptics.
It would be foolish to let that happen in relation to the topic of antibiotic resistance. For it remains undisputed that it is a problem, and that many people die because of it. It is, therefore, even more important to talk about it in a rational and sound manner.
