DOESN'T GOVERNMENT REALIZE DANGER OF POLICY?

Recently, I read an article about a woman with a staph infection that was
resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin. The reason given for this occurrence
was that since our government has decided that it would "send a bad message"
if it permitted drug users to purchase clean hypodermic needles, some of
them have taken to dosing themselves with antibiotics to avoid getting
infections. The long-term result of this is that they get infections that
are antibiotic-resistant.

I don't care how important our government's message about the evils of drugs
may be; any social policy that ultimately creates resistant diseases like
this is extremely dangerous.

The existence of an untreatable form of staph, as bad as that is, does not
worry me nearly as much as what may happen. What if some drug user happens
to come down with a form of pneumonic plague that is resistant to all known
antibiotics? It spreads through the air like a cold and, unless it can be
treated with antibiotics, has virtually a 100% fatality rate.

By way of comparison, the smallpox that the government has everyone so
paranoid about has a 30% fatality rate. The government had better consider
this carefully and decide how important its message about drugs is. Should a
deadly disease begin to spread, there will be precious few left to hear the
message.

Ann Morgan,

Oconomowoc