A famous Jewish joke
During a Yiddish play being given on Second Avenue (the old center of the Yiddish theater district), the curtain fell suddenly and the manager stepped out before the audience in the last degree of agitation.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I am distressed to have to tell you that the great and beloved actor, Mendel Kalb, has just had a fatal heart attack in his dressing room and we cannot continue.”
Whereupon a formidable middle-aged woman in the balcony rose and cried out, “Quick! Give him some chicken soup.”
The manager, surprised, said, “Madam, I said it was a fatal heart attack. The great Mendel Kalb is dead.”
The woman repeated, “So quick! Give him some chicken soup!”
The manager screeched in desperation, “Madam! The man is dead! What good will chicken soup do?”
And the woman shouted back, “It couldn’t hurt ?”
Chicken Soup
Many patients view antibiotics for a bad cold with this attitude. However, antibiotics can cause more problems than chicken soup – and therefore it could hurt to prescribe them.
Antibiotics Aren’t Always the Answer
Your throat feels as if you’ve swallowed broken glass, your sinuses have been clogged for a couple of days, you’re coughing up green stuff and you’re slated to fly in a week.
Never mind that your doctor thinks you’re suffering from a viral infection that antibiotics won’t touch. Why not start a prescription of some powerful bacteria-busting drug immediately, just in case?
Dr. Alastair D. Hay, who teaches medical students at the University of Bristol in England and also treats patients, says that until recently, even he may occasionally have succumbed to the pressure to hand over a prescription.
“As a personal policy, I don’t get into heated arguments with my patients,” Dr. Hay said.
And giving the standard lecture about how antibiotics will not stop a virus but may contribute to the growing, worldwide problem of drug resistance rarely convinces sick people that they don’t need the drugs. “Unless you can tell them that there’s an immediate downside for them personally,” Dr. Hay said, “the message just doesn’t sink in.”
Now, though, Dr. Hay can quote direct evidence of a downside. An increasing number of studies, including his own work, suggest that even a properly prescribed antibiotic can foster the growth of one or more strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria for at least two to six months inside the person taking the pills.
We (physicians) must do the right thing, even if it is inconvenient.
