The discoverer of penicillin, Sir Alexander Fleming, warned many decades ago that the “public will demand [the drug and]…then will begin an era…of abuses.” His prophecy has been realized, and I readily confess that I am guilty. During my 37 years in family practice and emergency medicine, I admit that I prescribed antibiotics for viral and self-limited illnesses. There were times when I bowed to pressure from ill and desperate (but not desperately ill) patients or their parents who demanded a cure for an upper respiratory infection.
