And in your hand I cried like Niagara.
And in mine you whimpered all bumble-bee.
And Tess hitched the switch to us proper:
"I do declare, y'all, God in peas."

FRONTLINE
PBS, Channel 13
"Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria"
Air Date: 10/22/13

DAVID E. HOFFMAN, CORRESPONDENT

If this is a really big public health problem, who's in charge of this problem for the
United States government? Can you tell me who's in charge?

ARJUN SRINIVASAN, M.D., ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, CDC
Who's in charge of resistance?

Of, of, anti—

Mmhmm.

—microbial resistance and, fighting it, and and iz—

Right.

—it's a threat to public health, right?

It is a threat to public // health.

So who's in charge with, dealing with that?

Well—

With coordinating it.

Well I think that, you know, the issue of of "who's in charge" of combating antimicrobial resistance speaks to the fact that this is a very, very complex problem, so there's not one single group that can take full ownership of solving the problem of resistance.

When I look at the Department of Health and Human Services, for example, and look at the assistant secretaries, there's not an assistant secretary who deals with antimicrobial resistance, um, there is, for other kinds of health problems, it seems that this is a problem that hasn't actually registered in the high levels of the government. It's a crisis, you said.

It is a crisis, it's indeed a crisis, there are a variety of different issues that have to be addressed. They require a variety of different actions by all of the different federal agencies who are involved in this.

(Jump cut, zoom in. Enter a specialist.)

BRAD SPELLBERG, M.D., INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST
It's not that the government agencies are not aware of the problem and are not doin—and are not doing anything. It's that we have not had a comprehensive plan, for how to deal with antibiotic resistance. We don't have, reporting mechanisms like they do in Europe, to know where resistance is occurring, wha—whose using the antibiotics. Are we overusing // them—

DAVID E. HOFFMAN, CORRESPONDENT

Wait wait you're telling me we don't know the answers to the extent of the problem?