In 2019, the WHO declared antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to be one of the top ten global public health threats. While the phenomenon itself had been known since 1940-one year before the first clinical trial of penicillin was conducted-and scientists had been aware since the mid-1960s of horizontal gene transfer-which spread resistance even more widely-only incremental and largely ineffective reforms followed. In Pyrrhic Progress, Kirchhelle seeks to understand this failure. The book examines first how antibiotics came to pervade animal husbandry, and second how the public, farmers, and regulatory agencies perceived antibiotic risks since the mid-twentieth century in the United States and the United Kingdom. Adopting a comparative approach, Kirchhelle describes the formation of two distinct risk epistemes in the two countries in parallel chapters. He analyzes these risk epistemes to explain the fragmentation and lack of political will to implement effective "stewardship" policies for antibiotics.
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