Giving Compass' Take:

• Mary Engel explains how the overuse of antibiotics in animals can lead to antibiotic-resistant bugs in humans, posing a significant public health threat. 

• How can funders help to prevent or reduce an antibiotic-resistant health crisis? 

• Learn how a one health approach can be used to fight antimicrobial resistance.

On Christmas day in 1948, a scientist walked into his laboratory outside of New York City to check the results of an experiment. What he found changed the way we raise farm animals and, according to journalist and author Maryn McKenna, set the world on course for crisis.

That crisis is antibiotic resistance, and it began — or at least accelerated — with the discovery 70 years ago that McKenna, the author of “Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats,” described Thursday to a packed auditorium at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

That scientist discovered that giving tiny doses of antibiotics to chickens sped their growth and protected them from crowding and other unhealthy conditions. Considered both a miracle and a moneymaker, the practice quickly became widespread in pork, beef and other meat production as well. But McKenna said the unintended consequence was that the pervasive use of these drugs put pressure on bacteria to do what they do very well even without encouragement — develop resistance through mutation.

To panelist Dr. Catherine Liu, director of antimicrobial stewardship at Fred Hutch and SCCA, stewardship programs have an added advantage: In addition to helping stave off resistance, they may help safeguard the microbiome.

Researchers are learning more about how the microbiome — the trillions of bacteria that live in our guts — affects our health. They are also learning how antimicrobials can kill off the good microbes along with the bad, upsetting the balance that allows the good guys to thrive. Preserving that balance becomes one more incentive to use antimicrobials judiciously.

“Antimicrobial agents have transformed the care of cancer and stem cell transplantations,” Liu said. "But they also play a significant role in disrupting gut microbiota, which we’re learning affects graft-vs.-host disease and transplantation outcome.”

Educating physicians — and the public they serve — about the microbiome could help in another way, by lessening the pressure to prescribe antibiotics even when they aren’t medically called for except to calm patients’ worries.

Read more about antibiotic resistance in agriculture by Mary Engel at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.