California pharmacy floods population with free antibiotics, promoting deadly superbugs and environmental pollution

Wednesday, February 20, 2013 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: free antibiotics, pharmacy, superbugs

---

(NaturalNews) Antibiotic-resistant superbugs kill 48,000 Americans each year -- roughly the same number of American soldiers who died in the entire Vietnam War. This data was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, and the data is from 2006. It's certainly much worse today, and the health care costs related to superbug infections surpasses $8 billion a year.

Superbugs are caused by the abusive over-use of antibiotics. In the presence of antibiotics, bacterial strains mutate and multiply to become completely resistant to those antibiotics, transforming into "super killers" that can be fatal and have no known treatments from the world of pharmaceutical medicine. (They can still be killed by colloidal silver, but the entire medical establishment pretends that colloidal silver doesn't work.)

Given these facts, it is astonishing that a California pharmacy named Stater Bros has announced a "free antibiotics" program, irresponsibly flooding the population with antibiotics and contributing to the deaths of innocent people due to the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

Stater Bros actions indicate the company is far more interested in its own promotions than the long-term impacts of flooding the human environment with antibiotics.

Here's a scan of their brochure being handed out right now at stores in California (see right). The brochure announces "FREE ANTIBIOTICS program" with a tagline of "Your prescription for savings!"

The second page of the brochure lists all the antibiotics the pharmacy will give away for free:

• Amoxicillin
• Ampicillin
• Ciprofloxacin
• Penicillin
• Trimeth / Sulfa

The brochure goes on to state:

Your wellness is important to us! We want to do what we can to help you and your family feel your best during these upcoming winter months.

This statement, of course, implies that antibiotics make you feel better and that they treat the flu in the "winter months." In truth, antibiotics are 100% medically useless against influenza, because antibiotics don't treat viral infections. They only treat bacterial infections, and the "flu" is viral, not bacterial.

Certainly, antibiotics have their place in the right context: limited, last-ditch efforts to treat specific infections where all other methods have failed. But wildly throwing them around the local community in a "FREE giveaway" is hardly "scientific" nor responsible. It smacks of an obscene abandonment of medical ethics and environmental stewardship.

Appallingly irresponsible, endangers the community

Here at Natural News, we find this "free antibiotics" giveaway by Stater Bros to be appallingly irresponsible. This marketing gimmick floods the human population with antibiotics, directly promoting the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of deadly superbugs that kill people.

The financial cost of antibiotics paid by customers helps limit their use to appropriate, "last ditch" medical necessities, thereby keeping their use somewhat in check. But by eliminating the financial cost of these antibiotics and giving them away as "FREE," the Stater Bros pharmacy directly encourages the indiscriminate, widespread use of antibiotics among their customers. Those customers then become breeding grounds for deadly superbugs that may infect and kill children or family members.

Pharmacies, of course, are a huge part of the problem of the mass over-dosing of Americans today. Pharmacies fill prescriptions for psych drugs for children. They administer vaccines containing aluminum, mercury, MSG and formaldehyde, causing irreversible neurological damage to vaccine victims. And now this pharmacy in California is giving away antibiotics with a complete lack of responsibility to its customers or its community.

Antibiotics pollute the environment

Antibiotics aren't just bad for humans when they cause superbugs to kill people; they're also a source of chemical pollution for the environment.

Many antibiotics, you see, end up being dumped down the drain by customers. This causes antibiotics pollution in the rivers, streams and oceans. It introduces a non-natural chemical at alarmingly high doses into aquatic ecosystems, subjecting fish and amphibians to the side effects of risky pharmaceuticals.

The water supply of 24 major U.S. cities is already contaminated with alarming levels of pharmaceuticals.

A study published in Environmental Science & Technology looked at the devastating effects of the environmental pollution of antibiotics:

"These are chemicals that are designed to have very specific effects at very low concentrations," said zoologist John Sumpter of London's Brunel University. "That's what pharmaceuticals do. So when they get out to the environment, it should not be a shock to people that they have effects."

As I've also written here on Natural News, the pharmaceutical pollution of our waterways threatens the continuation of life on our planet.

Stater Bros seems to be oblivious to all this. Functioning with a frighteningly limited view of how the world works, this pharmacy is flooding the market with antibiotics as part of a marketing and publicity program, even claiming to be helping communities get healthier. What it's actually doing, however, is creating an economic incentive ("FREE!") for people to acquire more antibiotics than they really need -- an action that will inevitably lead to people flushing those antibiotics down the toilet or dumping them in landfills.

Either way, those antibiotic drugs get introduced into the environment where they pose a very real risk to aquatic microflora and fragile ecosystems.

Stater Bros is, in effect, contributing to the chemical destruction of California's environment while at the same time encouraging the development of deadly superbugs that may threaten the lives of its own customers.

Way to go, Stater Bros! There's nothing quite so pathetic as medicine practiced without conscience, and science pursued without wisdom... all in the name of a free giveaway that was apparently dreamed up by corporate morons.

Source: This tip was sent to me by Mike Bundrant, a contributing author and radio show host at Natural News Radio.

His Facebook page is:
http://www.facebook.com/mikebundrant