Drug-Resistant Bugs Much More Common

Antibiotic-resistant infections are ten times more common than previously thought, according to a new study from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control & Epidemiology (Chicago Tribune). And you don't have to be an inmate in a jail or a hospital patient to be at risk. Although jails and hospitals have been hot spots in the past, dangerous super bugs like methicillin-resistant staph aureus are now much more common in the general community as well, as I wrote in TIME Magazine last summer.

In any case, poor infection control and improper use of antibiotics are the immediate cause of the growing epidemic of drug-resistant bacteria. But there's also a larger cause: our unwillingness to spend much money or devote much people power to public health measures that, in the long run, benefit all of us--rich and poor, jailed or free--alike.