Antibiotics change the normal gut flora very quickly – wiping out the indigenous, harmless bacteria and leaving the patient susceptible to resistant bacteria such as Clostridium difficile.
And as many people with respiratory tract infections don't need antibiotics in the first place, because the infection is not actually caused by bacteria, stopping them is perfectly safe.
Facebook Twitter Google plus Share Share this post Facebook Twitter Google plus close 12.36pm BST12 36 Zac Goldsmith, a Conservative, says it is madness allowing so many factory farms to use antibiotics when there is a risk of bacteria becoming immune.
Launching Australia's first strategy for tackling antibiotic resistance on Tuesday, the health minister, Sussan Ley, said more than 29m prescriptions for antibiotics were subsidised by the government in 2013, with the drugs reaching 45% of the population.
Ley said 65% of Australians believed antibiotics would help them recover from a cold or flu virus, despite the drugs only being useful to treat bacterial infections.
"Australians must understand that antibiotics will not work for viruses like colds and flu or for all types of infections," she said.
It means an increasingly elderly population left more vulnerable without antibiotics that work.
"The over- and misuse of antibiotics has been identified as a significant contributor to the emergence of resistant bacteria," Ley said.
It depends what you have been given antibiotics for.
But should most of us go against decades of medical advice and stop taking antibiotics once we feel better?
Meanwhile, case of E.Coli resistant to the main antibiotics used to fight them have risen too - with a slight decrease recently.
