Sources...

One of the things you learn in school, and in the sciences if no where else, is that citing your sources is essential. I haven't been as careful to do that as I could have been, so this is a link fest, with lots of links out to information on antibiotic resistance - how it develops, how you can avoid it, and what you can do to help fight the problem.

The first set is from the CDC, or the Center for Disease Control & Prevention. This is a great site in general, one I like to reference frequently. There's information here geared for patients as well as for medical professionals, and much of it can be found in multiple languages (most frequently English and Spanish), ensuring that the essential information for your health is available to you in whatever form is easiest/most useful.

Included in these links is a PDF from 2013 that summarizes the problem, with lots of illustrations and plain speech. It's 114 pages, so don't print it if you don't have to, but it's well worth the read, and I'm pretty sure everyone will be able to understand it.

The CDC materials have broken it down much the way I did, and even further. Do you want the material I covered in "Disappearing Miracle" or "No, the Z-Pack won't treat the Flu"? What about the concern of antibiotics in the food supply, or "SuperChickens?", or are you looking for more?

Another site I'm using is the National Resources Defense Council, or the NRDC. This is a charity that "works to safeguard the earth - its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends." This focus includes clean water, sustainable farming, clean energy, and ensuring that the planet we leave our children and grandchildren is one they can live on.

I'm also including a link from ScienceBlog here, specifically discussing the issue of antibiotics in farming. I tend to read lots of blogs, magazine & journal articles, and to hunt through books when I do these sorts of things. Sometimes, the journal articles are hard to read (yes, even for me, yes, even for the professors who taught me how to wade through them), but I honestly believe that science is all about the pursuit of knowledge, and I want to make it available to the people. That way you can make informed decisions and live a fuller life.

Other sites I use (perhaps not for this series, but as I go through life and answer questions in general) include pubchem and pubmed. These are great places to find journal articles (Students, pay attention) and chemical structures. If I've ever told you something about a chemical structure, I probably checked it out here. You want to see the structure of a virus? There are tools for that, too - here's an image of a rhinovirus, one of the 200 types of viruses that can cause a cold.

Maybe you dropped your pills this morning and mixed up which ones you're supposed to take this morning compared to the ones you take tonight. You can call up your pharmacy, but they'll tell you to bring the pills in. Or you can start with the Pill Identification Wizard at Drugs.Com, which also has an interactions checker.

Hopefully this source dump has been useful. I'll continue to do this from time to time, and remember, I'll keep linking things when I find them. SuperChickens? is coming soon, and then I have an exciting series in mind (right after I finish my next grad school application, and probably after Christmas). If you have a suggestion or question, feel free to comment below. Thanks!