Antibiotics

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

BBC

Business

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2017

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1928 a young bacteriologist named Alexander Fleming failed to tidy up his petri dishes before going home to Scotland on holiday. On his return, he famously noticed that one dish had become mouldy in his absence, and the mould was killing the bacteria he’d used the dish to cultivate. It’s hard to overstate the impact of antibiotics on medicine, farming and the way we live. But, as Tim Harford explains, the story of antibiotics is a cautionary one. And unhelpful economic incentives are in large part to blame. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Penicillin Fungi, Credit: Science Photo/Shutterstock)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	50 Things That Made The Modern Economy With Tim Harford
0:13.2	On a ramshackle pig farm near Wushi in Jiangsu Province, China, a foreigner gets out of
0:18.8	a taxi. The family are surprised. Their little farm is at the end of a bumpy track through
0:24.5	rice paddies. They don't get many foreigners turning up in taxes and asking to use the
0:29.8	toilet. The stranger's name is Philip Limbury and he runs a campaigning group called Compassion
0:40.7	in World Farming. He's not here to berate the farmers about the living conditions of their
0:45.7	pigs, although they are depressing. Sousa crammed into crates with no room to move. The living
0:51.4	conditions of the family aren't much happier. The toilet, Limbury finds, is a hole in the ground
0:56.8	between the house and the pig pen. No, Limbury is here to investigate if pig manure is polluting
1:02.9	the local waterways. He's tried to visit the large commercial farms in the vicinity but they don't
1:08.3	want to see him, so he's turned up on spec at a family farm instead. The farmers happy to talk.
1:14.9	Yes, they dump waste in the river. No, they're not supposed to, but that's okay, they just
1:20.3	bribe the local official. Then, Limbury notices something. It's a pile of needles. He takes a
1:27.3	closer look. They're antibiotics. Have they been prescribed by a vet? No, the farmer explains,
1:34.2	you don't need a prescription to buy antibiotics and anyway, vets are expensive. Antibiotics are cheap.
1:41.1	She injects her pigs with the routinely and hopes that'll stop them getting sick.
1:50.3	She's far from alone. Cramped and dirty conditions on intensive farms are breeding grounds for disease,
1:57.1	but routine low doses of antibiotic can help to keep disease in check. Antibiotics also fatten
2:04.0	animals. Scientists are studying gut microbes for clues as to why that is, but farmers don't need to
2:10.4	know why. They simply know they make more money from fatten animals. No wonder more antibiotics are
2:17.1	injected into healthy animals than sick humans. In the big emerging economies where demand for meat
2:24.4	is growing as incomes rise, the use of agricultural antibiotics is set to double in 20 years.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.