TED : The coming crisis in antibiotics

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Antibiotic drugs save lives — but we use them far too freely, and often for purposes that have nothing to do with saving them: treating viral infections like the flu, or raising cheaper chickens. The result, argues economist Ramanan Laxminarayan, is that these drugs will stop working for everyone, as the bacteria they target grow steadily more resistant.

Laxminarayan — then director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy — delivered this warning at TEDMED 2014. His core idea: treat antibiotics, and their ongoing effectiveness, as a finite resource, and think twice before tapping into it. It is a sobering look at how global medical trends can strike home.