Recently, it was discovered that halving the typical 10 day course of antibiotics for ear infections did not work in infants. Now, if you have ever worked with bacteria, this makes some sense. The 5 day course was insufficient to kill all of the bacteria, so patients suffered a relapse, likely helping to create resistant bacteria in the process. However, this was likely an important question to ask. It is now known that medicines are processed differently in children of various ages and adult men process medicine differently than adult women. Are antibiotics processed differently in infants? How long of a course is necessary in infants with ear infections? The standard course is 10 days, but with all the fun side-effects of antibiotics, can a shorter course be used? The answer was no, but the study was well done. As soon as it became clear that the shortened course was ineffective, the study was ended and all patients switched back to the standard course.
Of course, another source of antibiotic resistance is over-prescription of antibiotics. An interesting study would be to compare the effectiveness of a standard antibiotic course vs. a palliative course of painkillers. The current belief is that the majority of ear infections are bacterial, but some are viral. It would be interesting to test how effective antibiotics are. This is not casting aspersions on antibiotics. An important part of science is testing assumptions. If doctors had not researched whether a lumpectomy with adjuvant radiation was as successful a treatment as a radical mastectomy, millions of women would have undergone a brutal and disfiguring surgery that was an overzealous treatment. Asking questions is important in science and medicine, regardless of whether or not old assumptions are proven correct or overturned.
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