The Achilles Heel of Antibiotics

Cipro, the common name for an antibiotic once commonly prescribed, is not a safe drug. Cipro is short for Ciprofloxacin, and it is the most familiar antibiotic in a class called Fluoroquinolones.

Cipro is one of very few drugs that I always had with me when traveling and doing research in Latin America and in Madagascar in the 1990’s, when I was in my 20s. I took it more often than I like to remember. Cipro acts fast on many problems, including intestinal bugs. If you find yourself needing to board a bus for an uncertain duration while suffering GI distress, Cipro can solve the immediate problem. It seems to be your friend and ally.

I have no doubt that Cipro has saved some lives. I also have no doubt that Cipro has damaged many people beyond what should be considered acceptable, and that many of those damaged had insufficient information with which to make choices about their own health.

We deserve to have informed consent.

We do not have informed consent.

Ten years ago this month, while playing ultimate frisbee barefoot on an Oregon beach with my students, I fully ruptured my left Achilles tendon. In the moment, I heard a sound so intense and shattering that I thought it was gunfire. Nobody around me heard any sound at all. I also thought that someone had hurled a large rock at my heel. Of course no one had. My brain was searching frantically for an explanation for the experience that my body was having, and it was coming up with nonsense.

I leapt for the disk—the frisbee—and then heard gunfire, felt the hurled rock. I fell, sprawled in the sand.

I knew immediately that this was not a sprain.

Just before it had happened, I had been jumping in place to stay warm before the next point began, joyful to be playing one of my favorite games in the world, in a beautiful place, with a group of young people who were inquisitive and open. There had been just one thing that nagged at my consciousness—my Achilles tendons hurt just a bit. I had never before given my Achilles tendons a second thought.

Achilles was half mortal, half god, and his mother, the sea nymph Thetis, felt betrayed by the fact that her son could die. So she took her precious baby down to the river Styx, that provider ...