I have a couple of pieces of news regarding the discovery of resistance to colistin, the last-resort antibiotic that is the only thing that works for some multi-drug resistant infections. Two are positive news, and the third is a corrective to some earlier reporting, and a revelation of how complex the antibiotic traffic between human and animal medicine can be.

The positive news first: Both Europe and China are moving to examine the use of colistin in agriculture. The European Medicines Agency has asked the European Commission to be allowed to examine whether colistin use should be restricted. And in China, the central government is studying whether it should ban the drug from agricultural use altogether.

Timothy Walsh, DSc, a British microbiologist who has been studying antimicrobial resistance in China’s agriculture and