One of history’s greatest inventions was the first antibiotic. Made from bread mold, it had miraculous healing powers. Antibiotics have done more to improve human health than any other invention.
So, why are antibiotics so hard to obtain?
Since antibiotics keep people alive, they can be sold at high prices. Rather than simply let people go to drugstores and buy antibiotics, a distribution system has been legislated into a cash cow for all those allowed to participate.
Instead of market freedom, a very successful campaign continues to convince the more gullible people that free access to life-saving drugs is bad for them. “If people take too many antibiotics, germs will become immune to them, and we will all die.” An amazing number of otherwise intelligent people believe that.
It’s just not true. In South America, antibiotics were long available over the counter. No needless deaths were reported.
Antibiotics were first made from bread mold. Some diseases are cured with a mold that often grows on oranges. It would be interesting if one of the readers of these columns had any experience in actually curing illness with home-grown antibiotics.
It would be important to find out. Lives depend on it. No group of people has less disposable income than young parents. When their children get sick, they can’t just go to the drugstore and buy antibiotics. They must first pay a doctor for access to medicine to cure their children. If they had some cheap bread mold. . . .
The same economic interests make sure that similar difficulties exist when people are in great pain. Millions of people suffer needlessly because they can’t go to the drugstore (which is why they’re called that) and buy what they need to feel better.
While the pain imposed by our governments isn’t usually as agonizing at that inflicted by Pontius Pilate, an earlier government control freak, our response should be the same as the founder of our Church.
Easier said than done.
