Multidrug Resistance Gene Released By Chinese Wastewater Treatment Plants

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."

Comments

Antibacterial soap Frankenstein

[retroworks]

Antibacterial soaps are a frankenstein. Invented as something to cure a sppoky "risk" (like "bacteria") and sold, sold, sold. Multivitamins, ADHD drugs, billions of dollars of bullshit are being sold to consumers, harnessing innate risk aversion and evolved nurture to sell snake oil. India has already used so many antibacterial products that its hospitals are a paradise for resistant staph bacteria. Go upstream from the Chinese water treatment plants, and you'll find consumers who think they are doing the right thing and protecting their families.

Re:Antibacterial soap Frankenstein

[ShanghaiBill]

Antibacterial soaps are a frankenstein. Invented as something to cure a sppoky "risk" (like "bacteria") and sold, sold, sold.

Good news: The FDA is planning to restrict antibacterial additives.

antibiotic used "preventively" in cattle

[ruir]

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...

Re:antibiotic used "preventively" in cattle

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:antibiotic used "preventively" in cattle

[Anonymous Coward]

Native americans DID NOT live in metastability. Their civilizations rose and fell so quickly they barely left the stone age.

Check out what happened to the ancient puebloans for instance.

They abandoned their mighty cities, because they overextended their use of ground water.

Re:antibiotic used "preventively" in cattle

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet your argument, that the white colonists encountered an environment just as rich as when the native americans arrived at the end of the preceeding iceage thousands of years before, is patently false.

At last 3 species of megafauna have been recorded going extinct "rapidly" after this initial human expansion.

That alone invalidates your argument.

Then of course, you have the historicaly recorded incdeces in south america involving the incla, maya, toltec, and olmec peoples. You know, where they caused agricultural collapse through unsustainable agricultural practices, and even with rampant warfare cutting their populations to ribbons, they still didn't really escape the resource depletion crisis.

Sure, there are remnants of those cultures, but they are barely just that, with almost nothing in common with the civilizations they came from. The genelines might have survived, but the civilizations did not.

The native american civilizations were not magical hippies.

Re:some/could/etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say it is a pretty good chance, actually.

Your basic argument is that because it is a "possible" outcome, and not "divine omniprescient 100% certainty that it will in fact happen", that it can be safely ignored.

Let's examine how that is utterly retarded as a proposition, shall we?

I can strike a match inside a room filled with natural gas. It may or may not explode, depending on how much oxygen is also present. Since it isn't "100% straight up always going to happen", does that mean it is a good idea to strike matches around natural gas?

What's that?
No?
--I didn't think so.

The same is true with microbes and horizontal gene transfer. The germs are the room filled with natural gas, the genes being dumped are the match, and china is the idiot trying to strike it.

If they keep at it, it's gonna blow up. That's how the numbers stack up in such things. We have microbial colonies forming these resistant genomes in such tiny envirnments as hospitals, ad whole new species of extremophiles evolving from conditions imposed in places like the JPL laboratories. Here we have industrial scale contamination, over wide areas of planet, with literally uncountable species of potentially harmful microbes being given opportunities to obtain those genes from horizontal transfer.

Seriously. Pull the blindfold off.

I've FIGURED OUT HOW TO STOP MRSA!!

[MarkvW]

New Law Needed!!

If the Doctor doesn't wash his hands every time he visits you for treatment, then the Doctor must complete the treatment and cannot charge you for it.

This would cure MRSA REALLY quick!!

Re:Gene discharged??

[Firethorn]

Basically what the AC said. Bacteria don't have sexes, but they still swap genes via various ways, and are actually able to incorporate genes found in the environment. Lateral gene transfer is one of those 'oh wow' things when you get into what was at least in my time, college level biology.

Ever play bioshock and remember how you'd get powers via drinking or shooting yourself up with something? That's sort of what bacteria do in real life. The bacteria 'consumes' the genetic material and incorporates it in with it's own.

Summary is garbage

[russotto]

Beta lactam resistance is common. That's the class of antibiotics which includes penicillin; not an antibiotic of last resort by any means. (Resistance is so common that if you're prescribed a beta lactam antibiotic nowadays, it'll probably be compounded with a beta lactamase inhibitor) Since beta lactam resistance is so common, the gene will no doubt be common in the waste stream, not just in China but everywhere.

Carbapenems *are* last resort drugs.

[Valdrax]

Beta lactam resistance is common. That's the class of antibiotics which includes penicillin; not an antibiotic of last resort by any means.

It's also the category which includes carbapenems like Imipenem and Meropenem which are last resort drugs. In particular, the production of metallo-beta-lactamases like NDM-1 is a key adaptation to resist them, and the article highlights the risk specifically to neutralizing carbapenems as the main cause of concern.