Farmers Carry Multidrug-Resistant Staph For Weeks Into Local Communities

An anonymous reader writes: Fresh research out of the UNC Gillings and JHU Bloomberg schools of public health shows industrial farm workers are carrying livestock-associated, multidrug-resistant staph into local communities for weeks at a time. "Among the [22 people tested], 10 workers carried antibiotic-resistant strains of the bacteria in their noses for up to four days. Another six workers were intermittent carriers of the bacteria. The 10 workers found to carry the bacteria persistently had strains associated with livestock that were resistant to multiple drugs, and one also carried MRSA. Three more of the workers tested positive for strains of S. aureus that were not resistant to antibiotics. So in total, 86 percent of the workers in the study carried the S. aureus bacteria, compared with about one-third of the population at large, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." This problem has grown since its last mention on Slashdot. Unfortunately, massive industrial lobbying continues to neuter government action.

Comments

Re:Natural immunity

[whoever57]

the courses prevent enough sickness that farmers that ONLY give antibiotics to sick animals, at much higher doses, actually use just as many antibiotics.

You seem to be under the same misapprehnsion as much of the farming community -- that high doses of antibiotics are dangerous, whereas the reverse is true. Low doses are far more likely to cause resistance than high doses given for the proper lenght of time.

Re:Natural immunity

[philip.paradis]

Given that you bothered to reference "lenght (sic) of time," I find it disheartening that you have also demonstrated apparent failure to comprehend or intelligently consider bounding problems, population density, transmission risks and rates, practical effects of seemingly low mutation rates, microbiology, and systems thinking. In short, all activities involving large scale administration of antibiotics to livestock at dosages resulting in appreciable treatment/prevention efficacy are practices which drive substantial and increasing risks to public health.

The math doesn't lie, and the trending curves of probabilities associated with widespread epidemics aren't exactly uplifting. I'll make a preemptive recommendation that you suppress the urge to post anything resembling a cliché "citation needed" response here. Given the circumstances at hand, devotion of your time to even a cursory review of the aforementioned subject matter would likely be a more productive activity. Such study will necessarily involve your review of all citations referenced in said materials, review of nested citations, etc. You wouldn't want to compound foolishness with yet more foolishness, would you?

I'm willing to admit that I may be entirely wrong in my assessment of your level of knowledge, with the corollary that you are simply betting that your benefits will outweigh your risk in this area for the duration of your lifespan. However, given that I know nothing of your mode of living or the measures of your personal resource reserves on hand for reaction/relocation/adaptation/insulation in response a large scale communicable disease crisis, I must hazard a guess that you're either (A) dangerously ignorant of reality or (B) very well prepared to deal with things turning shitty in a hurry. It is my measured estimation that the odds of your membership in the intersecting set are quite low, given your mid-range UID and the generally incongruous nature of the respective attributes of the A and B sets.