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Tamar F. Barlam
But there's a dark side to the Cipro story that few people know about. Bayer sells a close cousin of Cipro, called Baytril, for use at poultry farms. Both drugs belong to a class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones. Fluoroquinolone use at poultry farms is worrying public health officials.
The more any given antibiotic is used, the greater the chance that resistant bacterial strains will appear and spread, so it's important to deploy these drugs as selectively as possible. At chicken and turkey farms around the country, however, Baytril is used too much, and is threatening human health. Because it's expensive to isolate and treat sick birds, especially in enormous factory farms with many thousands of birds, antibiotics are added to an entire flock's drinking water. So, whenever some birds are sick, the whole flock gets dosed. The result? Millions of healthy chickens and turkeys are "treated" with this drug each year in the United States.
Last year, FDA concluded that Baytril use in poultry is making Cipro less effective against certain types of severe food poisoning. Several types of bacteria can cause this ailment; the one bacteria that the FDA focused on -- Campylobacter -- already results in more than 13,000 hospitalizations and 124 deaths each year. At highest risk are the elderly and individuals with compromised immune systems, such as chemotherapy, transplant and AIDS patients.
FDA proposed banning the use of antibiotics like Baytril on poultry. Abbott Laboratories, one of two companies that produced them, quickly agreed to comply. Bayer, on the other hand, has asked for a formal hearing -- launching a process that can drag on for years, or even decades.
Bayer, headquartered in Germany, behaved very differently in Europe.
While Bayer has a right to seek a hearing, there are times when exercising your rights is just irresponsible, and this is one of them. While a hearing drags on, Baytril use would continue in poultry and resistant bacteria would continue to develop. The American Medical Association and dozens of other groups have called on Bayer to comply with the proposed ban, but those pleas have fallen on deaf ears.
Notably, Bayer, headquartered in Germany, behaved very differently in Europe. In 1998, Danish health officials identified an outbreak caused by Salmonella, another cause of food poisoning, that was resistant to six antibiotics, including a close relative of Baytril. The outbreak caused 27 illnesses and two deaths. One woman who died received a fluoroquinolone, but it couldn't protect her from that superbug. Subsequently, the Salmonella strain was traced back to a herd of pigs.
The Danish government urged hog farmers to use fluoroquinolones more carefully, but did not ban the drug. However, in response to widespread publicity about the outbreak, Bayer voluntarily withdrew its drug. Bayer stated: "The decision was reached because an attempt is being made globally to avoid inappropriate use of Bayer's fluoroquinolone [Baytril]." Yet Bayer is opposing the FDA's explicit proposal to ban Baytril -- a proposal made after the FDA had completed an extensive analysis, rather than following a single isolated outbreak. Whatever the reason for Bayer's refusal to withdraw Baytril from use in U.S. poultry, the result is the same: when it comes to Baytril, Bayer is using a different standard to protect public health in Europe than in the United States.
Bayer should join Abbott in putting the public's health first in America, too.
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