<p class="bodytext">The discovery of antibiotics was one of the most significant medical breakthroughs of the 20th century, dramatically increasing human life spans. Yet today, with antibiotic-resistant superbugs implicated in as many deaths as HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, the limits of these miracle drugs have become alarmingly clear.</p>.<p class="bodytext">At the ground zero of the growing crisis is India, one of the world’s largest consumers of antibiotics and a powerhouse in pharmaceutical manufacturing. In A World of Resistance, Assa Doron and Alex Broom draw on years of fieldwork in hospitals, in pharmacies, and on factory farms to examine the enormous social and environmental costs of overreliance on antibiotics. They show how an overtaxed healthcare system with limited oversight, widespread use of antibiotics in industrial agriculture, and the incessant dumping of pharmaceutical waste into waterways have created the ideal conditions for antibiotic-resistant microbes to grow.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Assa Doron is Professor of Anthropology and South Asia at the Australian National University. He is the coauthor of Waste of a Nation: Garbage and Growth in India and The Great Indian Phone Book: How the Cheap Cell Phone Changes Business, Politics, and Daily Life. Alex Broom is Professor of Sociology at the University of Sydney.</p>
<p class="bodytext">The discovery of antibiotics was one of the most significant medical breakthroughs of the 20th century, dramatically increasing human life spans. Yet today, with antibiotic-resistant superbugs implicated in as many deaths as HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, the limits of these miracle drugs have become alarmingly clear.</p>.<p class="bodytext">At the ground zero of the growing crisis is India, one of the world’s largest consumers of antibiotics and a powerhouse in pharmaceutical manufacturing. In A World of Resistance, Assa Doron and Alex Broom draw on years of fieldwork in hospitals, in pharmacies, and on factory farms to examine the enormous social and environmental costs of overreliance on antibiotics. They show how an overtaxed healthcare system with limited oversight, widespread use of antibiotics in industrial agriculture, and the incessant dumping of pharmaceutical waste into waterways have created the ideal conditions for antibiotic-resistant microbes to grow.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Assa Doron is Professor of Anthropology and South Asia at the Australian National University. He is the coauthor of Waste of a Nation: Garbage and Growth in India and The Great Indian Phone Book: How the Cheap Cell Phone Changes Business, Politics, and Daily Life. Alex Broom is Professor of Sociology at the University of Sydney.</p>
