How many are too many antibiotics? reflections on the use and consumption of antibiotics

Abstract

Today, the number of effective antibiotics for the treatment of infections is decreasing, without medical innovation being able to reach a technological solution. Meanwhile, the development of microbial resistance, that is, the development of genetic changes in the populations of pathogenic and non-pathogenic microorganisms that surround us is increasing. Faced with this imminent health problem, the use of antibiotics (as well as antimicrobial resistance) appears as an object for social science research, partly due to the imminent failure of biomedical innovation to find solutions to this problem. The objective of this article is to reflect on how ethnographic research could produce knowledge on the use and consumption of antibiotics in a given local context, be it Spain or elsewhere. To this end, it will first consider the way in which available data, numbers and statistics on antibiotic consumption are being created and used (or ignored) to legitimise the construction of public policies in Spain, to mobilise the so-called “antibiotic problem”. Besides, the article intends to locate this line of research within the broader context of the Anthropology of pharmaceuticals, and invites to take on a theoretical reflection on the relations the concepts of use and consumption of medicines as a starting point for an ethnography of antibiotics in Spain.