Antibiotics misuse could create a public health nightmare.

• Position: Special Newsletter Edition: Your Health

Stephen King's novel The Stand concerns the life-and-death struggles of people who survive a deadly flu-like illness and is a cautionary tale about abuse of medical advances. For example, the effects of antibiotics, once the wonder drugs that all but wiped out killers such as tuberculosis and surgical infection, are being eroded dangerously by misues and over-prescription, points out David Welch, associate professor of pediatrics, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

"Drug-resistant TB were really the first cases of drug-resistant bacteria that caught everybody's attention in the 1990s. We've had problems with drug resistance among bacteria ever since penicillin was introduced and used in the 1940s. Over the ensuing 40 years, there was a background level of problems with resistance. The public is now more acutely aware of the problem since the multi-drug-resistant TB emerged in the 1990s."

Put simply, bacterial microbes once pounded into submission by wonder-drug antibiotics are getting stronger, and misuse and over-prescription of antibiotics is making these bacteria into monsters. "Health care consumers should understand that most illnesses do not require antibiotics and they should not put pressure on their doctors to prescribe antibiotics for them."

Even when antibiotics are called for to fight an infection, patients often take them only long enough to suppress part of the illness. Once they feel better, they quit taking their medicine. This causes the bacteria to mutate into a stronger organism, and eventually render...