Slashdot Mirror
New Wave of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
reporter writes "New strains of 'Gram-negative' bacteria have become resistant to all safe antibiotics. Though methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is the best-known antibiotic-resistant germ, the new class of resistant bacteria could be more dangerous still. 'The bacteria, classified as Gram-negative because of their reaction to the so-called Gram stain test, can cause severe pneumonia and infections of the urinary tract, bloodstream, and other parts of the body. Their cell structure makes them more difficult to attack with antibiotics than Gram-positive organisms like MRSA.' The only antibiotics — colistin and polymyxin B — that still have efficacy against Gram-negative bacteria produce dangerous side effects: kidney damage and nerve damage. Patients who are infected with Gram-negative bacteria must make the unsavory choice between life with kidney damage or death with intact kidneys. Recently, some new strains of Gram-negative bacteria have shown resistance against even colistin and polymyxin B. Infection with these new strains typically means death for the patient."
Stop wasting all those antibiotics on beefing up our cattle and giving a bunch of supergerms a tolerance for the stuff?
I for one welcome our new found mutated bacteria overlords!!!
Great. A big thank-you to all the knee-jerk antibiotics prescribers and disinfectant abusers.
/cough bacteriophage /cough
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage
Sometimes I gets this weird feeling that for every medicine discovered nature pushes back with one that is more effective and deadly. Is the idea of world without diseases (never mind getting the medicine to all people) a utopia that will never get reached?
If science and technology don't win the race against evolution who will be around to crown the winner?
The bugs?
I didn't desert Windows; Windows deserted me: BSOD
I knew it was bad when hand sanitizer started popping up all over the place.
Sent from my iPhone 5
And the soccer moms as well who scream for antibiotics for everything from the common cold to a skinned knee.
These prescriptions are thrown around like candy whether they are warranted or not.
I'd really be pissed if that happened to me.
Can we use these to make black holes? Or at least hover boards??? Pleeeease?
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
The real problem is our hamhanded attempt to rid us of disease has made things much worse. They still continue to give antibiotics for colds, colds are viruses, and much of our food has been treated with them. Casual and improper use has created the monster bugs and now there's no way to put the genie back into the bottle. Best way to avoid the killer bugs? Stay away from hospitals, they are the breeding grounds for the new bugs. Some like MRSA are already in the environment so there's no way to be totally safe but most people do catch the bugs in hospitals.
And this, children, is why you always, always complete the full course of antibiotic treatment, even if you think the problem's cleared up half-way through. If you stop early you leave the small subset of bugs, not enough to cause a visible problem, that are the most resistant to the antibiotics. Lather rinse repeat a few times and you end up with bugs that laugh at antibiotics and proceed to run rampant.
Anyone remember Phage Therapy?
I've been hearing about phage therapies for years. Apparently they're effective against bacterial films and other hard-to-treat bacterial infections. I wonder if we'll see them in western hospitals.
As a recovering germaphobe, let me just say one thing:
Great.
It took me years to feel comfortable sharing food with a friend. Not to mention the ritual hand-washing, the avoiding of intimate contact with other people, etc... Clearly I was once on the right track in avoiding you disease carrying bastards :( .
Maybe in another three or four years I can feel comfortable enough to consider kissing another person. Or maybe I should just keep away from that damn, dirty world out there.
PS: Fuck you, webserver. Captcha = mating? What a jerk.
There's plenty of blame to go around, but of course the trick is what we do moving forward. Some of the simple techniques, such as ensuring hospital staff wash their hands, are very useful in terms of preventing the contraction of bacterial infections and should be something where we encourage, expect, and ultimately demand a 100% success rate (i.e. always wash your hands), without blaming people for not having done it in the past. Nurses at the hospitals with poor discipline stopped washing their hands once disposable gloves started being commonly used in medicine. At this point, for many of them, they have been told or taught to always wash hands or put on new gloves before touching a patient after touching nonsterile surfaces, but they're not part of a hospital culture where that is the unbreakable rule, so they get sloppy.
It's not everyone, nor every hospital, but it's common enough that it's not even frowned on at some hospitals. Simply attacking someone about doing it wrong isn't enough, nor helpful, and our goal isn't to blame, it's to move forward and say, "all right. No more! Let's get this right! Let's cut down on staph infections by twenty percent in the next year." There should be intense competition for objectively defineable metrics of success, where the higher the number the better the patient care (so no race conditions), with conservative results and massive penalties for failing to report properly (so it's in everyone's interest to do well but nobody's interest to cheat), and each year the hospital should be able to report, "we saved X lives this year, and Y of those are lives we saved because of these particular programs and improvements we've achieved since last year."
The goal isn't to blame, it's to achieve. It's to save lives. And ultimately, of course, to save the world. *Flash Gordon Theme plays*
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
The language of the slashdot post seems to suggest that the presence of gram negative bacteria is recent. It also suggests that the gram negative characteristic of the bacteria is the definitive characteristic of its virulence. Also, the Gram test isn't a 'so called' test, which somehow suggests or implies doubt.
The test has been done for decades; our knowledge of the two major types of bacteria (gram positive and gram negative) has been around for decades as well. And while gram negativity is characteristic of bacteria that must be approached with different antibiotic means than gram positive, due to their extracellular topology/materials, it does not mean that being gram negative makes the microbes virulent or specifically dangerous.
And to debunk the loose implication that gram negativity might have evolved from human antibiotic applications I will say this: it didn't.
General Bacteriology ftmfw.
Just add "human kidneys" to the Wal-Mart shipments from
China.
Yours In Riga,
Kilgore Trout
When antibiotics and antiviral research was first being used, they used methods of stimulating the immune system to a better response. But when chemicals proved easier, research switched to that. If we can get the immune system to fight them off itself, we won't have these problems.
Welcome back to the world before antibiotics were discovered.
However, a few decades of not using antibiotics at all and the bacteria around the world will again mostly be susceptible to the more common, low-risk ones. The mutations that make for antibiotic resistance have negative effects on bacteria's ability to reproduce... except in an environment with significant antibiotic use.
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
Would it be possible to at least take one (or both) Kidneys offline? Basically, run your body through a dialysis machine during the antibiotic procedure. Of course, this would have to be an extreme life or death situation to consider the possibility.
Life is not for the lazy.
Remove the kidneys for the duration of the antibiotic therapy and hook the patient up to a dialysis machine.
Who cares if it's a hack if it works!
It was Alexander Fleming who discovered antibiotics, not Pasteur.
But it's not the 'so called gram stain test' IT IS called the gram stain test.
So?
In general, pharma companies benefit from heavy use of antibiotics: immediately because they can sell more, but also in the long run because it makes their old products (for which they no longer hold a government-issued monopoly) obsolete faster, improving the market for newly developed drugs that fix old problems.
On the other hand, when it comes to these gram-negative bacteria the above idea does not hold true. They can't benefit from it if they don't have a product to sell that fixes the problem.
We must burn the hospital rooms with fire to kill all diseases.
If you know your therapy is going to destroy your patient's kidneys and put them on a kidney transplant waiting list, wouldn't the smartest thing to do be to remove them, treat the infection, then transplant their own kidneys back in place? So long as the kidneys themselves aren't infected, of course.
How can we now run around and say omg! omg!omg I'm going to die! When you post this stuff. I mean just look at h1n1...err I guess that is a virus. Never mind. Ok, what about the poor bacteria we keep killing....err, k I'll stop now. Too much sensationalism in the press is what will really kill us. That and a lack of education.
I don't know much about this part of science, but does it work to target whatever the bacteria is taking in to produce the next generation, or to produce their toxin (as opposed to targeting the bacteria directly)? I suppose it entirely depends on what the bacteria does that causes the problem, but for example an article linked in another comment mentioned MRSA developing a pump mechanism to deal with disinfectants- if you tricked it into pumping out its 'food', you would kill it and hopefully cause a drug-resisting trait to go out of favor.
My webcomic
No way nature would beat medical technology!!!
If it's possible to donate a kidney, and possible to remove a kidney intact, and possible to keep someone going with dialysis for a while, can they not develop a procedure to temporarily remove kidneys if the patient is going to have treatment that would damage them?
Prohibitive code? Difficulty keeping the organ alive outside of the body? Risks of surgery whilst infected?
We must burn the hospital rooms with fire to kill all diseases.
That's not enough. We must nuke all the sites from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
It's amazing what happens if you go to a doctor with the aim of being a responsible patient.
Some years back I had an injury that required a tetanus shot, and went to an urgent care clinic. I had a tough time convincing the receptionist that I wasn't in fact trying to get Percocets, but really just wanted my injury looked at.
More recently, a friend had an upper respiratory infection. She couldn't tell if it was strep or some sort of bad viral infection, so she went to a doctor. Again, she had a hard time telling them that she wasn't demanding drugs, she wanted to know if she needed them or not. (Turns out it wasn't strep.)
Infection with these new strains typically means death for the patient."
I'm not sure where this comes from. The article says that typically the patient only dies if they have a weak immune system. It even gives an example of a (supposedly healthy) news correspondent who chose to forego treatment to save her kidneys and eventually recovered.
It seems dramatically cutting antibiotic use promotes the growth treatable bacteria over non-treatable bacteria in human environments.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/23/tech/main6014559.shtml
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
I really hope that the people who get these diseases are all creationists. Don't believe in evolution? Don't want it taught to children? Have a taste of it, asshole.
I piss off bigots.
Extensively-drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is already a nearly-unstoppable killer. In fact, it could very well be a doomsday bacterium. It is deadly, practically untreatable, survives well outside of the human body (as long as it's away from direct sunlight), rather long incubation period.... Finally, to diagnose XDR-TB you'll currently need anywhere between 2 to 4 MONTHS! All that time you might be curing a person with drugs that are ineffective.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
In fact, more than 60% of the Gram negative isolates in our hospital (in-patients) appear to be producing an enzyme called extended spectrum beta lactamases (ESBL). These ESBL-strains are often resistant to other classes of antibiotics as well, narrowing therapeutic options. In a subset of cases, these bugs turn up as resistant to almost all the antibiotics we test.
But, I am yet to come across a case where the isolate was resistant to colistin and polymyxin B. No clinician would even think of using these drugs if other options are available. But, if, as the article reports, these organisms turn out to be resistant to even these last-resort drug... we can safely assume that we are in deep shit.
My family raises cattle on a farm in Iowa. Speaking from our experience, I'll tell you that putting a pound of meat on a steer takes in the neighborhood of ten pounds of feed -- and much more than that, if you're feeding them exclusively grasses (including hay).
So. Take a hundred head of cattle and turn them loose on a hundred acres of land. These animals are still growing (since, when they're ready for the slaughterhouse, well... they get taken to the slaughterhouse). If we want to put a hundred pounds on each steer, then that means each steer needs half a ton of feed.
Good luck getting 50 tons of grass from a hundred acres of land. It's not going to happen. The farmer has two choices at this point: raise fewer cattle (and thus raise meat prices for the consumer), or convert some of the cornfields into pasture (and thus raise grain prices for the consumer).
Either way you're talking about raising the prices of basic foodstuffs. You won't inconvenience the rich: the rich will still be able to afford filet mignon and Kobe beef. After all, they're rich.
But the elderly, who live on fixed incomes... poor families who depend on food stamps... or just a college student burdened with debt who wants to be able to take his girlfriend to a steakhouse for a special occasion... all of these people are seriously impacted.
The name of the game in modern farming is efficiency. Reducing prices is the overall goal.
us soldiers. malaria, haiti
http://larouchepac.com/node/13703
When visiting a doctor for a sinus infection, he said that in India they would take a swab from my nose, determine in a few minutes with a microscope what bacteria was bothering me, and give me a specific antibiotic that was known to work well.
In the USA, he said insurance tells them to just proscribe an antibiotic and if it doesn't work, they'll come back. The ten minutes of lab work isn't covered by insurance, so they don't do it. I asked if I could pay cash for the test with the microscope, but he refused and said he'd get in trouble.
Most doctors follow insurance rules, worry about liability, and treat symptoms, in that order.
Good news for us, Elaine Benes, and Squidward:
http://www.mrsapedia.com/sea-sponge-antidote-to-mrsa/
I heard about this a while ago. I'm wondering when it'll happen.
Probiotics are going to start being a LOT more useful than antibiotics. If you have a deadly bacteria, the best way to kill it is not to actually kill it with antibiotics (which generally kill everything that's not resistant to it), but kill it by flooding the system with beneficial bacteria that will compete with the harmful ones for resources and eventually starve them out. Antibiotics should only be reserved for cases where they are absolutely necessary, and a probiotic regimin should be prescribed after the antibiotics are done. Antibiotics also tend to kill a lot of beneficial bacteria, leaving a power vacuum where ANYTHING can take over very quickly after the antibiotics are done. Filling the hole with beneficial bacteria before anything else can get in is the best thing to do.
The question I have is, how quickly can we either build nanobots that can be programmed to attack these infections, or else develop custom tailored viruses that target them? In other words, are antibiotics the only way to attack infection, or might we be able to develop other weapons to use against them?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Story A - Every pharm company wanting to make a buck has pushed antibiotics into every nook and cranny, eventually creating strains of resistant bacteria.
Story B - An secret organization, funded by __________ has developed resistant strains to maintain and control ___________, and in some cases even __________.
Nope, I really don't want to know the real story.
We DON'T WANT any more ((*^^ing way too expensive patented drugs if they aren't necessary, it is already way too expensive because we let big pharma hijack medicine, corrupt the FDA with the revolving door between bureaucrats then into "retirement" in cushy positions in that industry, and therefore run up the prices to astronomical levels. If we have natural remedies that work, that's *good enough* and much cheaper. And we need "open source" medicines, get rid of these stupid patents altogether.
Want cheaper healthcare? Here's one way to knock a lot of zeros off that next doctor and hospital bill, get the bullshit wall street profits out of it, and run it a cost instead, as a public good. Direct funding to medical colleges for basic research, then OPEN SOURCE said research. Instant cheap generics then, with no huge long years and years wait.
"The programme revealed that we - ie humankind - had discovered a superior cure (to antibiotics) for bacterial infections around the same time that penicillin was being discovered. The research programme on bacteriophages (phages for short) began in Stalin's Georgia in the 1930s. To this day, our knowledge of each of the many thousands of phage viruses remains concentrated in a now rundown laboratory in Tbilisi, Georgia. The arrival of capitalism in the Caucuses threatens a repository of knowledge, built up over 50 years, that could prevent the superbug pandemic that threatens us all next century. ...
While there are some genuine reasons why phage treatments of bacterial diseases were overlooked in the 1930s and 1940s, the failure to develop a western research program into bacteriophage treatment in the 1980s and 1990s represents an inexcusable failure of western capitalism. By the 1980s, ther e could be no denial that antibiotic resistance was going to be a major problem in (if not before) the twentyfirst century. Yet, we just didn't want to know about what will probably turn out to be the most important medical breakthrough in the twentieth century; a breakthrough made in communist G eorgia, in Stalin's Soviet Union.
It is embarrassing when western science is out-trumped, especially by the "communists". Usually, when out-trumped, we don't tell anyone. That's what happened here. Not only did we not have the nous to start a western programme in bacteriophage research; we looked the other way when the files of phials threatened to be destroyed following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and during the little reported civil war that engulfed Georgia a few years ago. So much for the knowledge economies of the west. How can such valuable knowledge be so cheap?
It's not too late for western medicine to enter the post-antibiotic bacteriophage era. Our grandchildren will hardly thank us if we persevere with our corporate-profit-motivated conservatism.
The Soviets were able, eventually, to admit that they were wrong to follow Lysenko. Will we in the west be equally able to admit that we were wrong to put all our medical eggs into the one antibiotic basket, in the process ignoring the most basic tenets of the theory of evolution?
"""
From:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL9910/S00096.htm
(I'm glad to see several people have posted links to phage therapy information.)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I note the parent post did not mention antibiotics, but just killing bacteria. Which Pasteur did pioneer, thus the term "Pasteurization".
I'd rather be alive and have to eat a few more veggies than dead with a colon full of meat.
Increasing resistance to antibiotic drugs is a problem that needs more government intervention.
Big pharma doesn't like developing new antibiotics. There is no money in it.
They sell very poorly as they are only used when the dirt cheap generic antibiotics don't work.
Any new antibiotic with a novel method of action is going to have next to no sales from being reserved for life and death cases to prevent resistance.
This leads to a high cost per dose, which means it gets a rough ride trying to pass any cost effectiveness tests by governments assessing $/per life saved. Especially if it is also narrow spectrum or choc full of side effects.
Good job folks..
Way to overprescribe antibiotics as well.
Don't see the tie in? You've not done your homework.
There is a simple reason for that: People don't want to know whether they are sick, people want their doc to "fix them". Not in the veterinary way, of course.
They want to get well quickly. And the quickest way for the doc is to pump some antibiotics into the patient, whether it helps or not. Antibiotics don't do jack with viral infections, yet you still see them prescribed by irresponsible docs. Because they know it takes the patient off their back for 2 weeks (i.e. as long as the damn cold takes), they can still send a bill, the patient thinks he's been taken good care of and the pharma industry is happy 'cause they sold another dose of their drug.
It's win-win-win all around.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Here in Portland Oregon, our most popular markets sell grass fed/free range meats. It is very pricey, but it sells extremely well. Generally, most of us eat less beef overall, but are more than willing to spend 2-3x as much for quality organic beef.
Even our fast food chain, Burgerville, uses beef from http://www.oregoncountrybeef.com/ and somehow their burger prices aren't too high. I'm just saying, corn fed isn't the only way to sell beef successfully.
Stopping giving them for every sniffle and virus.
It worked for the Norwegians.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
For the bacteriophages. The viral "predators" for these bacteria. Several Russian scientists were making a
lot of progress with using bacteriophages to treat bacterial diseases around the same time penicillin was being isolated. Now, true, bacteria have defence mechanisms to fight these viruses, just as they do to antibiotics, but a significant weakening does occur. Cycle through several viruses at a time per strain treating, and you will be able to reduce much of the infection. And as the culture is small and weak at that point, finish with a run of antibiotics, and boom, patient lives without destroying the kidneys.
Is this oversimplified? Perhaps a tad.... But the sewers of any major city with a standing infection of these bugs, or better yet, a good Russian prison with one hell of an outbreak (or American, or French, just using Russia as an example as there is quite a bit of drTB around...) and the sewage is a breeding ground of bacteria, and the viruses that prey on them. Isolate the viruses, culture, and keep a bank going for each strain, and it "could" be an excellent starting treatment.
And heck, if you don't mind being blue, mainline some bacteriophages, and afterwards pump yourself fu of colloidal silver.... You'll still have your kidneys, but be a smurf for life.....
To be honest, I'm caught in the middle of this "Big pharma? Good or evil?" debate.... On one hand, sure, I agree with you that many people employed in the pharmaceutical industry want to do good, and aren't part of some agenda to kill people and boost stock prices But let's face the facts. That's almost a universal truth, when you start talking about individuals you've singled out in ANY company. It also holds true for the military. (Talk to a U.S. solider who was deployed to Iraq, sometime. Chances are, he signed up for the service NOT because he had some agenda in his head, but simply because it paid pretty well in a bad economy - and he's trying to take care of a family.)
What you always have to examine is what direction the company is headed, on the whole. That's where I start to see the other side of the debate. It's pretty easy (and common) to hire thousands or even millions of employees who practically ALL believe they're doing "good", while the end result is decidedly "evil". Some of the big pharmaceutical firms come from fairly "tainted" backgrounds, too.
Take, for example, Bayer Corp. Today, you think of them mainly as providers of aspirin ... but in WWII, they were cranking out mustard gas, military grade chlorine and phosgene for Germany. In fact, they were stripped of their right to trademark aspirin after WWII in many nations due to their direct involvement in the war.
Every time I see a Lysol Hand Sanitizer commercial, I get the sudden urge to punch babies. The phrase "RESISTANCE, MOTHAF**KERS!!" comes to mind (pardon my french)...I can barely remember the last time I've used hand sanitizer and I get sick like once a year [knock on wood].
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
simple solution: ;)
get nasty bacteria
hit bacteria with a really tiny hammer
record the sound with a "micro-ear":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8529232.stm
get some "the who" type speakers
play the sound back really loud
watch bacteria explode
profit
IIRC they also still hold the patent on Heroin. It was developed as as substitute for Morphin without the addictive side effects...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't fear the creepy green light.
Seastead this.
So I still have my duct tape and plastic from the anthrax scare. Is it time to go wrap up the house?
Eucalyptus trees have such a thing. They communicate with pheromones through air, to update other trees about immune system information and other dangers. Just like we would tell others that danger is approaching.
What we need, is a way to tell other people around us, how to defend themselves against new pathogens. Like telling someone. Only that it would be immune information. E.g. in form of T-cells.
But we would need a way to prevent e.g. a virus from infecting the T-cells themselves, to use this path to transmit itself (like a trojan horse). Which is especially important with allergies. (Those should of course not be transmitted!)
Yes, vaccination is a somewhat like it. But it’s centralized and has a huge delay.
I hope that in the future, we will be able to do this with small chips working in team with the immune system. Simpler: Transform other people’s immune cells into own ones, so that the body can use them.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
All the existing antibiotics attack various mechanisms of bacteria. Even though the cellular critters can evolve around these attacks, it generally requires more resources to do so: extra thick cell walls, extra toxin pumps, etc. While any one work-around won't be a major stumbling block for the critter, It seems to me that fairly low doses of many antibiotics would attack enough mechanisms of the critter to slow down its reproduction enough for the human body's defenses to have an edge on it.
It's just like WW2: you bomb their train tracks, bridges, ports, power plants, etc. such that the total result slows them down even though no one attack stops them. It seems the current crop of antibiotics try to be a single magic key, which is unrealistic in the long run.
Table-ized A.I.
Ever been to Mexico? Brazil? Ecuador? Thailand? Vietnam? India?
Walk into any pharmacy. Tell them you've got a little bit of a sore throat. 30 seconds later you're walking out of the pharmacy with a package of antibiotics.
What's worse, is that you get none of the precautionary questions/warnings regarding side effects, possible allergies to antibiotics, instructions to take the whole package, etc.
*This* is where the problem lies. My experience with US and European antibiotics prescriptions has been that there actually is a decent amount of responsibility on the part of prescribers. In other places however, antibiotics are uncontrolled, very cheap, and very very easy to get.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I've known a lot of people who'd been prescribed antibiotics at some point in the past, who still had some lying around, long after the reason they were taking them had cleared up. I usually find this out when one tells me he/she wasn't feeling well, but took some antibiotics. I then ask, "so, you went to see the doctor?" and they reply "no, I had some left over from last May, you know, when I had..." While IANAD, I have worked in the medical field, and know you don't just USE antibiotics (or any prescription drug,) whenever you don't feel right unless you happen to have the medical knowledge to prescribe same. A lot of people bitch about dosing livestock with antibiotics, and that's simply NOT the reason these "super-bugs" are developing. Cattle, as a for-instance, don't stop taking their meds when they feel better, (being convinced they don't need to keep taking them). Only human beings are stupid enough to do that. The livestock who are "pumped full of drugs" (including antibiotics) are FREE of infections, because they HAVE been pumped full of antibiotics. For those here who are only PASSINGLY familiar with Darwin's observations, resistance occurs when a colony of organisms is ALMOST wiped out. The survivors reproduce, and all their children inherit their slightly increased resistance which allowed them to survive in the first place. Repeat until Super. This is how this occurs. It happens because some people CAN'T follow instructions, when they are told by their doctors to take ALL of the prescription, and decide they'd better "hang onto the last little bit, just in case", which ends up turning their bodies into Petri dishes for whatever it is/may be attacking them. This becomes the case, if not for the infection for which they were prescribed the medicine, then the next one when they use up the rest they saved. People hear the word "antibiotic" and don't realize there are dozens of different ones, perhaps even hundreds, and they don't all work on every little thing, and none of them work on viral infections. Maybe, just maybe, if they want to contain this impending plague, (which will make the Bubonic Plague look like a minor cold,) it is time to take steps. For example: they could start treating antibiotics as controlled substances, and require them to be administered by medical personnel, IN PERSON, i.e., in a hospital or clinic, instead of sending people home with them counting on them to follow instructions, which so many people, take my word for this, CAN'T OR WON'T DO. Many drugs are treated the way they are because of the potential dangers posed to the patients if they are taken without medical supervision, (the reason why there is a difference between "prescription" and "over the counter",) but we SHOULD be making the same consideration for the safety of the general public. But... we won't. Get ready. It's going to get ugly, I think. But of course, there is good news: as the populace gets wiped out, the cost of housing should go way down, due to high-supply and low demand as large numbers of people get wiped out. The ease with which people travel from location to location is going to spread these 'bugs' like a wildfire in a tornado.
Go there and see for yourself how bad the situation is regarding the overuse of antibiotic.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Bruce Sterling wrote what is still probably the best article for the layman about the inevitability and dangers of bacteriological antibiotic resistance.
Bitter Resistance
Check it out, peeps.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Spray non-resistant bacteria all over the hospital, allowing them to occupy all surfaces and consume all the nutrients.
Instead of taking their pills, people in South Africa smoke them to get high. No kidding. Those who don't want to get high can sell their subsidized/free pills to those who do want to get high.
Here's a link: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/168402-overview
The article is incorrect in many points. Firstly it is not just the two antibiotics mentioned that are effective against gram negatives, but quite a large range of Aminoglycosides, Quinolones, and even some Cephalosporines for example. Resistance against these happns too, of course.
Furthermore, damage to the kidneys (or hearing nerve) and other severe adverse effetcs can happen, but are rather the exception than the rule. The patient's choice is thus not "to lose his kidneys or die with intact kidneys" but to accept a reasonably small risk of potentially serious adverse effects in exchange for a treatment that is most likely life saving.
Of course it is sad if we gradually lose more and more powerful antibiotics because some reckless idiots overuse them in clinical practice (the USA is one of the worst offenders in that aspect within the "ciilized" realm, especially when it comes to misuse and overuse of Fluoroquinolones) or, even worse, just in order to make cruel intensive meat farming viable.
In some ways this is one of the unintended consequences of patient choice.
If a Doctor wants to keep his patients, he/she not only has to provide high quality-medical care, but also the perception of high-quality medical care. Are you going to tell your friends about the doctor who sent you home telling you to drink plenty of fluids and tough it out, or the one that prescribed you a bottle of pills and sent you out for additional tests "just to be on the safe side".
Plus, no Doctor ever got sued for prescribing antibiotics that wern't needed.The converse isn't true.
Very well said. Those that scream "conspiracy theorist" seem to miss the simple facts about how some (most?) human beings behave when they have a lot of power and get rewarded for a given behavior. Even more so in a large organization.
And some people ARE sociopaths! In fact, that may well be the case with high level executives, which set the tone for their companies and make key decisions:
http://willblogforfood.typepad.com/will_blog_for_food/2009/07/are-ceos-sociopaths.html
A "good" CEO has to be a sociopath, pretty much. Sociopathic behaviour is, unfortunately, also the most profitable one. And profit is what CEOs are measured against.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Parent did not mention antibiotics by name, but with context: article is talking about antibiotic resistance, and parent says, 'for finding a way to kill deadly bacteria is now infamous for enabling the same.' Reading comprehension, FTW.
Look, we just don't want you manufacturing Revigators, take a freaking hint!!!!
- Fed
Hey, so far it has worked for Keith Richards...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Removing people from the act in which they participate makes them capable of doing truly horrible acts they could not do alone. Plus the underlings have an added benefit of shifting blame and they can do even more horrible things. Plenty of studies to back this - some famious. In addition, more recent studies show that people are way more dishonest with things removed from their monetary value - ex: you won't steal a buck from a coworker but you'll take their coke from the fridge much more easily.
Corporations can exploit the human morality loopholes just as much as government, military or cults do and while they are smaller, they distribute their profits to the shareholders while the others are not so even handed with the rewards. The behavior is somewhat organic in how it evolves and runs on the collective minds of the members like a distributed virus - the system can minimize or encourage this.
Example: My cousin does math problems for a living. He doesn't see the connection between them and insurance policies for a reason. He knows his work may shift policy or decide something that could kill somebody but he can't make that connection because they purposely remove that - he prefers to think he is not part of the problem and does not feel a connection other than working for an evil corp which a lot of people must do and somebody else would take his job if he refused. This is how it gets done. Little Eichmanns are just a dark part of human nature that everybody at some point participates to various degrees - which is likely why so many get upset at the concept..
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To be honest, I'm caught in the middle of this "Big pharma?
Like most hot-topic issues in the world, that's probably the best place to be. It would be nice if zealots only existed in religious circles, but they don't. Remaining in the middle, open minded, critical, and interested is about the best thing you can do for yourself and those around you.
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Mutations are actually a rare occurrence in nature (one every million or billion copies) but unfortunately with the growth rate of bacteria, this event occurs much more frequently than most people understand. Bacteria are like any other living organism, they want to survive. The healthy WILL survive and as others have posted, total eradication is not possible. The best we can hope for is to CONTROL the organism and subsequent growth.
Mother nature actually has a way to handle this right now...the problem is that sometimes mother nature takes a while to produce these weapons of war. Mother nature uses special viruses that only target bacteria called bacteriophages. Since these viruses mutate faster than the host bacteria, mother nature provides a solution to the mutating bacterial problems. This is not a new science, it was discovered nearly 100 years ago, but since antibiotics seemed more efficient, this science has been taking a back seat. Recently this promising new science is providing an alternative solution when all else fails. It certainly isn't a silver bullet, as it has it's limitations, but if you can find a way of putting these little viruses in contact with the bacteria, they will work and they can control the disease.
Check out www.omnilytics.com
Unfortunately, I believe they left out the most important point.
You have to ask- where are these resistant bugs coming from? Doctors tend to assume they evolve in people using antibiotics. Or they come from Nature's repository. Not likely.
But in truth, the majority are coming from a really stupid, short sighted and corrupt business practice we should abandon on economic grounds if not health grounds: CAFOs. (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations- as promoted by misguided Govt policy.) For respectable background see
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/wise_antibiotics/pamta.html
But that isn't strongly enough stated. We know H1N1 came from the neighborhood of a Cargill Pork CAFO in Mexico. We know some strains of MRSA in the UK came from pork plants in the Netherlands. We know where nasty e-Coli comes from- Beef CAFO's in the USA. Doctors are mostly ignorant of the impact of using most of our antibiotics to help keep "healthy" animals alive and happily obese in tiny factory feed lots.
If terrorists decided to create a super-bug to kill us all, they could hardly do better than build a modern CAFO.
And CAFO's are not even the cheapest way to make meat. They are the most efficient way to gather the largest amount of taxpayer subsidies (mostly for corn) together in the smallest space. Cheaper meat (for the consumer and taxpayer) would actually be safer meat! We simply cannot afford to breed superbugs to make meat 5% cheaper (for the meat packer)!