AIDS and Antibiotic Abuse

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1994. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

AIDS and Antibiotic Abuse

Futurist (11/94-12/94) Vol. 28, No. 6, P. 58

In "The Plague Makers," author Jeffrey A. Fisher describes how an overuse of antibiotics could be a contributing factor to AIDS. Fisher believes that extended and excessive use of drugs such as tetracycline may suppress the immune system to the point that unusual forms of Mycoplasma bacteria develop. The bacteria interacts with HIV to eventually cause AIDS. "We have to be suspicious of the role of HIV in the development of AIDS...It is clearly time for us to focus on the co-factors, especially antibiotics," says Fisher. The antibiotic-related model, he says, would explain why the incubation period of AIDS takes years; why HIV existed as a relatively benign disease in Africa up until recently; and why there is a small, but growing, number of AIDS patients who are HIV-negative. The negative role that antibiotics play in other diseases must be researched further, Fisher warns.

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