Dear Editor,
How amazing that doctors were able to transplant a pig's heart into a human (The Guardian, 10th January 2022).
But what saddens me is that achievements such as this, and also more run-of-the mill miracles such as hip-replacement, will soon become a thing of the past as drug-resistance makes antibiotics lose their effectiveness.
The real tragedy here is that this could have been completely avoided but commercial interests (mass animal farming!) and the willingness of doctors to prescribe unnecessarily have, over decades, whittled away at this major weapon in our armoury.
How strange it is that we can invest so much effort in tackling Covid-19 but neglect other medical topics which potentially could lead to far more serious suffering: In the case of a loss of antibiotics, a return to the horrific consequences of sepsis (blood-poisoning) so feared by our grandparents.
Of course we can throw money at the pharmaceutical-industry in the hope (but not the certainty!) that they can come up with a replacement. But surely it would have been better to protect the tool that we had rather than throw it away so irresponsibly?
Regards
