Game Theory and the Usage of Antibiotics
It’s been shown that the usage of antibiotics by members of society can be somewhat modeled by a multiperson game referred to as “The Tragedy of the Commons” (article link at bottom). In “The Tragedy of the Commons,” the players are many individuals who make up a group. Each player has two strategies: A and B. Strategy A gives the individual a higher payoff than strategy B, at the cost of every other player in the game being worse off than if B were picked. The benefits of the individual do not outweigh the summed costs of the other players, thus the group as a whole suffers. Despite the costs to the group, choosing the selfish choice is the dominant strategy since each individual is always better off choosing the selfish strategy. Thus, although everyone individually would be better off if everyone chose the unselfish strategy, no one does, and thus everyone is getting less than ideal payoffs(hence “tragedy” of the commons). This is similar to Braess’s paradox, as discussed in class, since when every player chooses the dominant strategy the whole is worse off, and the removal of the dominant strategy as a choice all together would benefit everyone.
The article, titled “When Does the Overuse of Antibiotics Become a Tragedy of the Commons?” states that to a certain extent, the use of antibiotics resembles a “Tragedy of the Commons” game. This is because as more people use antibiotics, the chances of a resistant strain being created increases. Thus, antibiotics generally shouldn’t be used on someone that is only mildly sick, since this will increase the number of untreatable severe cases. While it may benefit the mildly sick person to take antibiotics, the increased chance of a resistant strain coming into existence hurts society. It was determined in the article that it benefits(for this model one’s benefit/payoff is inversely proportional to the amount of time spent severely infected) that individual most to either go all out with the antibiotics or to actually not use antibiotics at all. This is because antibiotics can also weaken your immune system, so it’s important to make sure the disease being treated for is completely eliminated. Either way, doctors must restrict the amount of antibiotics they give out in order to prevent the creation of resistant strains and thus maximize the effectiveness of the antibiotics (similar to how removing the highway in Braess’s paradox is beneficial). The article also mentions that vaccinations for rare diseases also resembles the “Tragedy of the Commons” game. Once a disease is rare enough, for any given individual the risks of the vaccination itself outweigh the benefits, since the chances of getting the disease even without a vaccination is so low. However, if everyone decides not to get vaccinated, the chances of a resurgence of the disease is higher, and since nobody was vaccinated for it everybody is much worse off. These situations pose some ethical questions as to whether or not it is justifiable to force or deny medical care (namely vaccinations and antibiotics) to individuals in order to help society as a whole.
Here is the article link for further reading.