>>If it's useless, why are they still selling it here? Why is it manufactured at all?

I said effectively useless against many organisms. It still has uses for some strep and other organisms but would be a poor choice if there's pus or unknown infection. But it is cheap.

>>And if the resistant strains are so prevalent, why are they still administering antibiotics to cattle? Wouldn't that expose more strains to the known antibiotics and just open the stage for new resistant strains?

Certainly- which is why the EU is acting against use of antibiotics in feed.

>>Just sayin' it doesn't quite add up. And all the infections we had in the family in the last dozen years were cured by those simple antibiotics, mostly versions of penicillin. That accounts also for the years we lived on the west side of the puddle.

Including viral infections? ;-)

>>Their practices are well over the top, and are basically extortion. We may regret letting them get away with that. It would be interesting to compare their figures for actual research vs those for advertising, bribing and litigation.

You already have what you want: no new classes of antibiotics have appeared since the 1980s, meaning there's nobody raking in huge profits to pay for the risk they took, Hurrah?