FDA To Decide Fate of Triclosan, Commonly Used In Antibacterial Soaps 223
kkleiner writes "The FDA is finalizing its review of the antibacterial agent triclosan common to many soaps and other health/household products after four decades of use. Recent studies suggest the chemical may be harmful to animals and could interfere with the human immune system along with increasing the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The agency has been slow to cast a verdict, to much criticism considering its widespread use."
Only valid use is in toothpaste (Score:3, Interesting)
where it is markedly better than anything else, though I wouldn't object to seeing it prescription only.
All other usages should be discontinued.
Further, _all_ anti-biotics should be on a rotating schedule, and only used for a period of time brief enough that it's unlikely bacteria will develop resistance, then some other similar anti-biotic rotated in, repeat as necessary, and new anti-biotics are added into the rotation schedule (and only used when prescribed by a doctor, or injected by a veterinarian).
This could be easily enforced by manipulating the expiration dates of anti-biotics.
William
Re:I sense a great disturbance in the web... (Score:5, Interesting)
As for the farm animals most use antibiotics because of feeding corn to cows, or the crowded way chickens and pigs are kept. This use could be eliminated but food prices would go up.
Re:the scare the women marketing strategy (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, this is a common marketing strategy, for several reasons:
- Women are a lot more likely to be homemakers than men, so they're easier to bombard with advertising.
- Women are slightly more likely than men to make decisions using emotion rather than logic (everyone uses both ways of deciding, but where they conflict men are about 60-40 in favor of logic while women are about 60-40 in favor of emotion).
- Women do most of the shopping in most households.
- Women are significantly more socialized than men to give presents to each other to cement social bonds.
All this adds up to advertisers targeting women for common household products, particularly women who grew up before the rise of Second-wave Feminism. And although this is changing a bit, most ads for cleaning supplies, food, diapers, paper towels, etc feature those products being used by women rather than men.
Re:the scare the women marketing strategy (Score:4, Interesting)
There is evidence, including a large Finnish study, that the more variety of microbes you're exposed to as a child, the healthier your immune system as an adult and the less likely you are to have autoimmune diseases.
Re:I sense a great disturbance in the web... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I sense a great disturbance in the web... (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with the parent in the sense that there is a use for such soaps, but that doesn't mean it can't be more limited in use. I've had some issues with outbreaks on my shoulders and back, and the typical products I used as a teenage that kept my face pretty much pimple free did nothing. My doctor suggested using antibacterial soap. At first I thought he meant a prescription, but no, he meant just the Triclosan generic stuff. I had usually avoided the stuff before hand, but afterwards it clearly worked (even at one point double checking by only using it on one side and normal soap on the other, with a night and day difference). This doesn't mean everyone should use it, but it definitely has its uses in some cases.
The grandparent is an idiot, and as lipid layers of cells don't work like that and are much harder to break up. The concentrations, time, and mechanical agitation needed to break up cells using normal soap would be unrealistic for use on the skin, especially if you want to keep the skin intact. The point of soap is not to kill the bacteria, but to make it easier to wash things off the skin that would not wash off with water alone.
Re:antibiotics are bad (Score:4, Interesting)
The awfulness of this post is pretty remarkable. Sidestepping the wrong "your":
*) This antibiotic isn't for "taking", it's for things that aren't edible like soap and toothpaste
*) Overuse of antibiotics doesn't "raise your resistance to them", at best it increases the bacteria's resistance to them, but in actually it just increases the chance of creating an antibiotic resistance strain. Almost all of the time, however, any resistant bacteria that may develop are killed by other means (like your immune system) and don't live on.
*) One should never save antibiotics, but rather take them when prescribed and as prescribed. While your post could be construed as saying that, the reality is that antibiotics generally require a prescription so it's unlikely anyone will have any to save unless they were sick but are feeling better halfway through the prescription. Saving them at that point is the worst possible thing you can do; not taking a full regimen is what is primarily responsible for resistance.
All that being said, the first point is the most important: this is an external antibiotic. Since it's not applying evolutionary pressure while the bacteria are in your body, there isn't a combined force to make deadly resistant bacteria: ones that survive the antibiotic may not be as effective in the body and thus no one cares. Further, even if that is not the case, the mechanism of action is not the same as other antibiotics so it can still be killed off effectively. For instance, MRSA which is resistant to basically every internal antibiotic can be killed by Triclosan (the chemical in question).
It's very important to understand that not all antibiotics are the same. Something like a blast furnace will kill bacteria and they will never develop a resistance to it, period. However, it will also kill all of humanity so it's not a fantastic treatment for infection. Ditto with chemicals like ethylene oxide or other physical means like gamma rays. Something like bleach is also very effective at killing bacteria, and can even do so on human skin, but obviously doesn't leave the skin doing so well on longer exposure. There are many many things that kill bacteria. The only ones that are really 'special' and need careful use are the ones that can kill bacteria without killing people. Triclosan kind of falls in the middle and while it deserves some consideration, that 'ZOMG RESISTANCE" response isn't really appropriate either.
Re:Statism at its "best" (Score:2, Interesting)
Indeed, it is libertarians all the way down in corporate thinking, and the corporate class are free to do what they want as long they have reached that stage of critical mass and minimal competition. We are supposed to ignore that the producers are free to affect the testing business through purchase of stock, etc. At least with government testing and standards, the regulatory capture should be readily apparent (Citizens United is an attempt to circumvent this, however).
Operations (Score:4, Interesting)
When it comes to operations though, they can spend over 2 minutes washing, easy. While 'plain old soap' is very much a step, to my knowledge they also use a anti-microbial soap that's NOT based on triclosan in favor of some prescription level compound.
But from what I'm seeing from my searches, common anti-microbial soaps are no better than regular soap, and even when it is 'better', the difference borders on 'insignificant'.