Thomas R. Frieden Quotes

MRSA, which is a kind of super bug mutant, is killing 10,000 people a year in Britain.

Reducing MRSA infections is critical because these bacteria are difficult to treat and are common in healthcare settings, especially among ICU (intensive care unit) patients.

When antibiotics became industrially produced following World War II, our quality of life and our longevity improved enormously. No one thought bacteria were going to become resistant.

Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. This will be a post-antibiotic era. In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry. A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill.

The more we look at drug resistance, the more concerned we are. It basically shows us that the end of the road isn't very far away for antibiotics.

I had a MRSA infection on my ankle. At the time, I had never heard of MRSA. I didn't really know a whole lot about it. It really scared me.

In learning to utilize antibiotics for the control of human and animal diseases, the medical and veterinary professions have acquired powerful tools for combating infections and epidemics.

We need to know more about how group A strep interact with humans to cause so many different illnesses.

Antibiotics are so pervasive that they are often prescribed preemptively, as soon as patients report symptoms, before a diagnosis is made.

Some hospitals screen all ICU patients and isolate those with MRSA, a process that can be challenging for both caregivers and patients.

The importance in what we're seeing in countries around the world is a poorly regulated and poorly functioning private sector using irrational and ineffective medications that result in the emergence of drug-resistance tuberculosis. What we've done is begun a program to rapidly improve infection control in places that are treating TB patients.

Some countries that grow lots of pork, like Denmark and the Netherlands, are either eliminating antibiotics or reducing them. We have to do that. Otherwise we'll create such antibiotic resistance, it will be just terrible.

I've had staph a few times myself and MRSA.

Why do physicians prescribe powerful antibiotics? Generally not because our patients ask for them. Most people who come in with a sore throat would be just as happy leaving my office with a prescription for Chloraseptic as clarithromycin.

When we prescribe antibiotics for a strep throat, it's not even for the strep throat. It's for the complications of the strep throat.

If at the first sign of infection, you always jump in with antibiotics, you do not give the immune system a chance to grow stronger.

Every outbreak across the globe today stems from a descendant of the medieval plague.

Why some gonococcal strains are more resistant than others is still not clear.

If you really want to isolate a disease, then you have to isolate the people who carry it.

Widespread use of antibiotics promotes the spread of antibiotic resistance. Smart use of antibiotics is the key to controlling its spread.

The first true antibiotic to be derived from a culture of an actinomyces was isolated in our department in 1940. The organism, Actinomyces antibioticus, yielded a substance which was designated as actinomycin. It was soon crystallized, and its chemical and biological properties were established.

Bacteria are single-celled organisms. Bacteria are the model organisms for everything that we know in higher organisms. There are 10 times more bacterial cells in you or on you than human cells.

In the development of antibiotics, the soil microbiological population has contributed more than its share. It is to the soil that the microbiologists came in search of new antibacterial agents.

Antibiotics vary greatly in their chemical nature, mode of action upon different organisms, and effect upon the animal body. The selective action of antibiotics upon bacteria and other microorganisms is known as the antibiotic spectrum. Some antibiotics are characterized by a very narrow spectrum, whereas others possess a wide range of activity.

The problem of chemotherapy of bacterial infections could be solved neither by the experimental medical research worker nor by the chemist alone, but only by the two together working in very close cooperation over many years.