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Multidrug Resistance Gene Released By Chinese Wastewater Treatment Plants

Posted by Soulskill on from the giving-them-a-sporting-chance dept.

MTorrice writes "In recent years, increasing numbers of patients worldwide have contracted severe bacterial infections that are untreatable by most available antibiotics. Some of the gravest of these infections are caused by bacteria carrying genes that confer resistance to a broad class of antibiotics called beta-lactams, many of which are treatments of last resort. Now a research team reports that some wastewater treatment plants in China discharge one of these potent resistance genes into the environment. Environmental and public health experts worry that this discharge could promote the spread of resistance."

2 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. antibiotic used "preventively" in cattle by ruir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, I have seen my gf, parents and even myself being given by doctors high spectrum antibiotics for trivial sickness; then the disgrace of the cattle and farming industry using preemptively antibiotics just in case, for being able to maintain animals in unthinkable environments and for fattening animal and not stopping at anything, even when it is already widespread knowledge antibiotics will stop working in less than ten years time. And know it is Chinas fault???? Talking about the elephant in the room...

    1. Re:antibiotic used "preventively" in cattle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In all 3 circumstances, the same root cause is responsible: Big Industry.

      1) the medical profession has thousands of careers and work opportunities on the line, influenced by the mere appearance of being negligent. As a consequence, doctors routinely perscribe preventative antibiotics, as insurance not against disease, but against accusations of being negligent at healthcare providers.

      2) the meat and dairy industry is suffering from the unsavory effects that big name oligopolies introduce when they battle it out for low low prices. It costs considerably less per unit of product produced to shove 500 cattle into a pen barely big enough for 100, by essetially crating them in tiny stalls where they stand knee deep in their own shit 24/7, in front of a trough filled with corn, than it does to raise them on an open pasture. As such, marica's loe of eating beef every day of every week makes NOT using antibiotics an insensible proposition; instead of drug resistant bacteria, there would be high meat prices and meat shortages as demand far outstripped supplies. There's a LOT of cashflow at stake there.

      3) china is trying to enter into a market space where it has to compete with the shit caused by the big names in western marets, and as such, has to be competative against even the sickening shit going on listed above: the only way to do that? Do it themseves, more radically, with no oversights or controls, and offer the products even cheaper.

      The root problem in all cases?

      Money, and the inherent failing in EVERY economic model ever tendered by greedy idiots: the belief that "externalities" don't matter, and that purpetual growth in production is always possible no matter what, and that no matter how fucked up the consequences make things, "science" and "technology" will "always make it OK."

      Chew on that for awhile.