Superbugs Unplugged

Join Lance and Matt as they sit down with Dr. Laura Huber and Dr. Thomas Van Boeckle to discuss the findings of their recent paper, which looks at reductions in antibiotics in chickens in Canada and the impact on resistance in Salmonella, Campy and E coli. 

In this episode, co-hosts Dr. Lance B. Price and Lydia Palumbo sit down with Louise Francois Watkins from the Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the CDC. They discuss antibiotic resistant campylobacter, and how it makes its way into our lives through our food and pets.

In this month's episode, co-host Dr. Lance B. Price talks with his former colleague and current friend, Dave Wagner, a plague expert at the Northern Arizona University. The two discuss plague, why it's still around. and the critical role antibiotics play in protecting the public .

Join Lance and Matt in this month’s episode, as they meet with Dr. Jeffery Klausner, a Clinical Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences and Professor of Medicine at the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. We’ll explore the threat of drug-resistant gonorrhea, how it came to be, and how the flaws in our health system make it a daunting issue to solve.

In this episode, Maria Lettini, executive director of FAIRR, talks about their latest report: Feeding Resistance: Antimicrobial Stewardship in the Animal Health Industry. It's the first report to assess the animal health industry through the lens of antibiotic resistance and highlights the role that the sector can play in tackling the growing risk of resistance. Co-host Matt Wellington and Maria Lettini also discuss how this investor network raises awareness of the environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities brought about by industrial farming. 

This month’s episode focuses on the work of the Peggy Lillis Foundation established in 2010 by Christian and Liam Lillis after the untimely death of their mother to a C. diff (Clostridioides difficile) infection. Hosts Dr. Lance B. Price and Matthew Wellington interview Christian Lillis who serves as the foundation’s executive director. In this moving episode, you will hear about the loving and giving life of Peggy Lillis, her battle with the infection neither sibling had ever heard of, and how and why the brothers stood up the foundation in her name. 

 C. diff  is a Gram-positive, spore-forming bacterium or germ and is the most common cause of infectious diarrhea in healthcare settings. It causes nearly 500,000 infections and 29,000 deaths every year in the United States. The Peggy Lillis Foundation is building a nationwide C. diff awareness movement by educating the public, empowering advocates, and shaping policy. Learn more about the foundation's important work.

In March of 2020, the world's attention turned to one public health threat --- COVID-19. As we battled this horrific pandemic, rumors began circulating about the high rates of prescribing “just in case” antibiotics by health providers .   

These fears were confirmed in a recent study from The Pew Charitable Trusts that reviewed antibiotic use among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The findings strongly suggest significant overprescribing during the first six months of the pandemic. 

Dr. David Hyun, a pediatric infectious diseases doctor and Director of Pew’s Antibiotic Resistance Project joins hosts Matt Wellington and  Dr. Lance B. Price on the podcast to talk about the issue of antibiotic overprescription in human medicine. The conversation covers concerns about COVID-19’s impact on antibiotic resistance and renewed antibiotic stewardship efforts in human medicine. 

We spend a lot of time talking about antibiotic resistance, but lately, something else has caught our attention -- antifungal resistance! 

Thanks to the changing climate and increased fungicide use, a couple of nasty fungi have begun developing resistance genes that could make fungal infections in people untreatable. 

When did this happen? How bad is the threat? What are the solutions? As always, co-hosts Matt and Lance have lots of questions. Fortunately, Dr. Tom Chiller, Chief of the Mycotic Diseases Branch for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has lots of answers.  

Join us for an exciting conversation with the CDC about the wild world of fungi. 

This month on the podcast, two all-stars from Niman Ranch join Lance and Matt for a fantastic discussion on raising animals without the use of antibiotics. Chris Oliviero, the General Manager of Niman Ranch, and Ron Mardensen, an Iowa-based hog farmer and field agent for Niman Ranch, detail the benefits of a farming system that doesn’t overuse antibiotics. 

Meat production is the single largest purchaser of medically important antibiotics in the United States. Often these antibiotics are used to combat unsanitary or stressful factory farming conditions, rather than to treat verified illnesses. According to sales data from the past few years this number is trending in the wrong direction, which is bad news for keeping antibiotics effective. 

Niman Ranch has led the way in raising hogs, cattle, and lamb without the use of any antibiotics. Their secret to success? Let pigs be pigs! Plus they use a combination of fresh air, low stress environments, and the occasional essential oil to keep animals healthy. Here’s to hoping conventional producers are taking notes. 

You have heard of antibiotic overuse in food animal production, but wait until you get a load of spraying antibiotics on citrus trees.

In the United States, the use of medically important antibiotics on crops has more than quadrupled from 2000 to 2017 and the problem is only getting worse. The EPA recently greenlighted the potential spraying of more than 650,000 pounds of streptomycin, a critically important antibiotic, on citrus crops in Florida and California. This is bad news for antibiotic resistance. 

This month, Nathan Donley, a senior scientist from the Center for Biological Diversity, joins Dr. Lance B. Price and guest co-host, Sydney Riess, to discuss why antibiotics are being used in citrus in the first place and how the practice may be contributing to the antibiotic resistance crisis we are in. Maybe its just us, but air-blasting medically important antibiotics out the back of a pick-up truck all over citrus trees seems like a recipe for disaster. 

Ready to take action? Add your name to this petition urging the EPA to stop spraying medically important antibiotics on citrus crops: 

https://uspirg.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=43218