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Thousand-Year-Old Eye Salve Kills MRSA
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists at the University of Nottingham used a recipe from an ancient medical text to successfully kill golden staph bacteria, also known as MRSA, the superbug commonly found in hospitals. Bald's Leechbook calls for leeks, garlic, brass, wine and other ingredients to create an eye salve for curing an infected eyelash. The salve has been found to be effective in killing the MRSA at least as well any modern remedy.
"You won't believe what this weird thousand year old trick can do!..."
It works "at least as well as any modern remedy."
And since modern remedies can't kill superbugs, we must assume this one can't either.
well when you think about it, having something that can be 'tested' by trial and error, over many years (only a thousand in this one, but i'm sure there are even lengthier examples) -- something that sticks around, probably has some use, even if it's opaque to us.
Did you mean: wikileeks
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Link
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Killing bugs is easy. It's not killing everything else in the vicinity that makes it hard.
That's why antibiotics were invented in the first place.
Only a lab test, yes.
And at one point, "chewing willow bark" was just a crazy home remedy, until a lab test discovered that willow bark contains salicin, which your body converts to salicylic acid... which is just un-acetylated aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid).
They test these things in labs, and discover that, "Hey, there's something to this that seems to work."
Then they do MORE lab tests, to discover the mechanism of action.
Then, they do even MORE lab tests to determine if the mechanism of action can be delivered in a way that is deadly to the microbe but NOT deadly to the infected person.
The interesting thing about this new concoction is that it is made from leeks, garlic, wine, and bile salts, none of which are necessarily toxic to a human (people who have had their gall bladder removed actually take bile salt supplements), and three of which are actually considered very tasty additions to many dishes we usually eat. That suggests that the active ingredient or mechanism might actually be helpful in humans. Contrast that with ingesting household bleach, which usually ends with you dead on the floor in a puddle of your own shit and piss, or applying chlorine bleach to an open wound infected with MRSA, which may not kill you, but certainly will leave chemical burns on top of your infection.
Why is it that people who fancy themselves SO goddamned smart have to sneer at every science article as if the results were obvious, clearly wrong, or deliberately misleading? For fuck's sake, stop trying to show off how smart you are - you're not that smart, and you're definitely not that amusing.
It is interesting one of the ingredients is cow bile. Definitely not something you would think of as an disinfectant. But, being from India, I know so many people who believe cow urine and cow dung has disinfecting properties. May be there is something to it. Cows digest tough vegetation. Their stomachs are full of bacteria that could break down vegetable matter. May be there are so many beneficial would-not-harm-a-mammal bacteria in there, some of them might fight of any bacteria that would infect its host, the cow.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Go read up on the likely and common side effects of:
1) Vancomycin - fucks up your kidneys at levels above 10 micrograms/mL (.1 grams / liter)
2) Untreated MRSA - fucks you up, as in dead.
3) Copper - 2 mg/Liter is considered the "safe" level in your drinking water.
So yeah, copper CAN fuck you up... but so can vancomycin, and vancomycin does so at much lower concentrations.
As far as the other ingredients - leeks, garlic and wine may make your breath a little potent for a while, but people eat that shit daily, and love it.
Given that MRSA is also *frequently* a skin infection, the route of topical treatment is also a great motherfucking idea, Einstein. And the fact that skin treated with Vancomycin and this remedy had comparable levels of reduction in MRSA load, no, it's NOT a stretch to say that it might be as effective as any modern remedy. In fact, it's kind of *exactly* as effective as modern remedies, based on this study.
Jesus fuck, just because you know Python doesn't mean you know the first fucking thing about biochemistry or medicine.
Staphylococcus Aureus, aka "Golden staph" is not exactly synonymous with MRSA. The MR part means 'Methicillin Resistant', which is a mutated form of SA that can't be killed with Methicillin, a common antibiotic. SA is extremely common - it's everywhere, all over your skin, right now. It's only dangerous if it starts to infect a wound and gets into the bloodstream. Most SA will still respond to antibiotics, only the MRSA strain won't. But this strain is still thankfully fairly rare, though it's a growing problem. One solution would be for everyone to stop taking antibiotics for minor ailments such as the common cold which it does nothing for, but adds a lot of unnecessary antibiotics to the environment, thus prompting common bacteria such as SA to evolve into the MRSA form. If we lose the benefit of antibiotics, it will be a disaster, and we can thank all the stupid people for that.
and it keeps vampires away
Table-ized A.I.
A couple of pretty toxic ingredients there. I suppose as a topical remedy you could use it. But saying it's as effective as any modern remedy sounds like a bit of a stretch.
Considering the MRSA is resistant to modern antibiotics I would assume pretty much anything is as effective as any modern medicine on it. Hell homeopathics might work as well.
Garlic is a very effective antibiotic - but only when it's raw, cooked garlic doesn't work. Garlic juice was used in the trenches in the first world war for fighting infection. I don't know about the other stuff, but the garlic on its own would kill MRSA in some circumstances.
Idiot, "resistant to antibiotics" does not mean "immune to all antibiotics."
It is immune to some classes of antibiotics, yes. Other classes of antibiotics continue to be effective. Vancomycin, for example, is effective on most MRSA infections. So no, homeopathic remedies are NOT going to be "as effective as any modern medicine."
Go try to sound smart somewhere else.
It was a joke, which is why I used mentioned something as funny as homepathics medicine. I agree with some of the other posters that they probably didn't test against the best modern medicine, which is why the description is vague, and if they tested against something not effective. Well, then something equally effective is not very effective.
We can not have people getting treated with inexpensive ingredients from their kitchens. That would be so uncivilized! Lucky thing we stopped red rice yeast for lowering cholesterol. Phew!
Your doctor doesn't want you to know aboyt this 500-year-old remedy for venereal disease.
Hint: it's mercury.
Not every old remedy is good for you. If you get into the history of medicine, you'll find lots of old remedies that are harmful.
It's fine for water pipes. Copper *is* toxic when when you ingest it in sufficient quantities and in he right form but you will not ingest Cu (in suff ...) when drinking water from copper fed pipes. That's one of the reasons why it's used.
Why not ask your plumber to replace all that nasty copper pipe work with lead (Pb) in your house? After all the moniker "plumber" is derived from plumbum which as you know means lead in Latin. Why not make use of the "wisdom of the ancients"?
Cheers
Jon
Easy answer to that: Like most people, he's been programmed to think that only large companies can come up with something that works. If it didn't involve people with lots of fancy letters after their names, and billions of dollars, it must be shit, right? After all, big brand names and money are the only factors that give credibility these days.
Indeed it is. Good thing it doesn't dissolve in water very well. And what does has a hard time getting into your blood.
(what degrades copper pipe is corrosion.)
Really - should I quit even coming here for news? I haven't seen one item this week that wasn't on reddit for a day or more.
We took a poll, and everyone wanted you to stop coming here, and stay on reddit. Thanks for the fish.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The interesting thing about this new concoction is that it is made from leeks, garlic, wine, and bile salts, none of which are necessarily toxic to a human
Don't forget brass is in that mix. A weird mix of both good and bad.
The copper in brass is germicidal, the reference to the MRSA application is in this article, very impressive stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Now there might even be some reaction to this aspect of brass (probably the zinc in it?) Note this is conjecture on my part at this point
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
Regardless, this is very good news. All of the botanicals and other ingredients are probably serving as a vehicle to keep the brass from doing harm to the person - an example is getting a cut from a brass object which can be difficult to heal. I suspect they are hard at work on a injectable solution. 100 percent kill within 4 hours is amazing, although it might be hard to do inside the body, perhaps will take a day or two. Plus, it will be much harder to develop resistance to this.
Why is it that people who fancy themselves SO goddamned smart have to sneer at every science article as if the results were obvious, clearly wrong, or deliberately misleading?
It's unfortunate, but confidence is inversely proportional to intelligence. We have a lot of folks in here that should actually be on Yahoo comment boards, because as soon as an article comes out, they are spewing their bullshit, buzzing around it like blowflies on a fresh wildebeest carcass.
And they hate absolutely everything.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
One person gets it. Wow.
The interesting part of this article is that this is a concoction that wouldn't ordinarily be thought of as an effective antibiotic. No one will be compounding leeks and garlic and prescribing it. Something interesting is occurring here. Once we discover what it is it could lead to some interesting new classes of drugs.
Its the copper and brass in the mixture. Copper is a germicide of some worth.The other stuff probably soothes the wound.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Did you mean: wikileeks
Damn, ran out of mod points, but this is funny. Get to work vigilant moderators!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The thing is, that salve was intended for external use only. You *don't* put garlic, e.g., into your body, except for your digestive tract. And brass is a pretty good germicide all on its own, so perhaps some of the other parts of the mixture were to make the brass biologically available. The wine is probably to thin the mixture so that its penetrating (and alcohol is a pretty good germicide). Etc.
As an external salve this probably has some pretty reasonable uses...thick enough to be sticky, thin enough to be penetrating, and quite germicidal in multiple ways. It's also likely to give you heavy metal poisoning if you use too much of it too frequently, so dosage will be important. I don't know what the leeks do for the mixture, but they probably add texture while also being a yet different form of germicide.
It clearly isn't a mixture I would have thought of, but when pointed out it seems quite reasonable...as an external ointment for very occasional use. You could probably improve it by adding a bit of iodine or bromine...but that might cause the dissolved metallic salts I'm presuming to be present to percipitate, so maybe not.
As for this being the basis for a new class of drugs...I doubt that. It sounds rather like a mixuter of drugs already known to be effective, and one that's just a bit dangerous to use (though not as dangerous as MRSA).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Luckily for doctors, MRSA is often a skin infection. So, even if this turns out to be "topical use only," maybe you put something like this on the wound site where the infection started, and you dose the patient with Vancomycin or other high-potency antibiotics to knock down anything internal - this might be a faster, more complete, and less detrimental regimen to use for a lot of people who end up with MRSA infections.
Heavy doses of vancomycin can fuck you up big time too, probably more so than a short, high dose of copper would; And it's possible that exposure to BOTH harmful compounds could be minimized by using them in a 'cocktail' form.
As far as being a new class of drugs - stranger things have happened. Allicin in garlic has also been found to have some antimicrobial properties, so it's entirely possible that there's some sort of interaction between the the many, many compounds undoubtedly in this brew, that intensify each other's effects, as well. And, to the original point - you don't have to chew willow bark to get the medicine from it anymore, we've learned how to synthesize a very pure and readily bio-available form of the active ingredient -- more research may find a way to combine the best parts of these treatments without needing you to coat your body in copper, leeks, garlic, bile, and wine anymore. Just because this is a primitive form, there's no reason to think we can't isolate and improve on the active ingredient(s) just as we have with literally every other medicine known to man.
A nurse that I had the honor to know contracted mrsa from a patient. Modern antibiotics would knock it down, mrsa constantly reappeared. It spread to her brain and my wife and I held her hand, prayed, and even though she appeared "out of it" a tear ran down her cheek just before she passed. She heard us praying for her, thus the tear. If a 1000 year old homeopathic medicine helps fight mrsa, why would anyone be against it? For Susan Schakel Jenks, my Chritian Sister.
"Then, they do even MORE lab tests to determine if the mechanism of action can be delivered..."
You left out the primary reason for all this effort. Willow bark can't be patented. Without a patent it is useless to investors, who are the only people that matter.
Many drugs began as ordinary substances. They would remain so but for the power of the patent. The patent is a jealously guarded piece of property. Obviously no infringement can be tolerated, but it goes way beyond that.
Anyone trying to sell the original substance (which may have been used for centuries) will have to deal with the Food and Drug Administration (the enforcement arm of the food and drug manufacturers). There will be questions about the safety and/or efficacy of the formula. There will be questions about any health claims made for the substance. Labeling and packaging will be scrutinized. And though there is little money to be made with herbal or generic products, there can be huge costs when you go up against Big Pharma.
It isn't about helping patients in the USA, it's about money and lots of it.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Garlic is known to have antiseptic properties. Leeks are related to garlic but may have different compounds with antiseptic properties. No idea what the bile does.
We don't need any amazingly complex and fantastically expensive research here. We have a substance known to work. It would be helpful to isolate the active ingredients, but that's not the crazy expensive part.
Of course these days, aspirin is cheap enough in generic form that it makes sense to just use it, but even otherwise, why would I need to grow my own willow tree? (unless I just want one)
Then there's marinol. They extracted the THC from pot in some mis-guided effort to get the medicinal effects without admitting they screwed up with the war on drugs. And of course, it was to be far more expensive than even the black market herb it replaced. It failed since they lost at least half of the beneficial effects and potentiated the tendency to cause psychosis. Turns out the CBD is as important as the THC.
Recently, it was discovered that nicotine can be very effective against the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and started a mad dash to come up with something based on it that isn't nicotine. Nobody seems to have considered passing out gum and patches.
Anyhow, it worked out very humorously this morning considering that the article is about ancient medicine.
We have a combination of hundreds of substances known to work topically with unknown side effects. There's a huge number of unanswered questions.
Which parts of the garlic are actually relevant? Yes, garlic is antiseptic, but do any of its components interact with other parts of the concoction? How does the wine play into this? Does this concoction have any long-term side effects? (After all, one of the active ingredients is a heavy metal.) What if it's used repeatedly? Does its behavior differ when used internally? Which parts need to be isolated in order to achieve maximum effectiveness with the minimum number of chemical compounds? (A more complex medication means more chances for people to be intolerant to some ingredient so a chemically simpler formulation actually has benefits.) Under which circumstances should this stuff not be used despite being otherwise indicated? Are there, for instance, any adverse interactions with other medications?
Can you answer any of those questions with certainty right now? I don't think so. You may think that this stuff isn't important but a doctor would want to know whether it's known-unsafe to use this stuff on a patient who is on medications A, B and C and suffers from known medical conditions D and E.
No, big pharma is not nice. But that doesn't mean that they are completely useless and just dick around with flawless medicines in order to make them more expensive. They do a lot of rather expensive testing to make reasonably sure that this stuff is actually safe to use and its failure modes are well-understood.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Doctors know how to prescribe Vancomycin and other broad spectrum antibiotics without killing their patients Einstein.
Untreated MRSA infections on the skin are common and easily treated; probably 10% of the people in this country have MRSA colonized in their sinuses. Bloodstream infections cause problems, septic shock does kill, Einstein.
See other comments pointing out how wrong you are about copper, Einstein.
The other stuff probably soothes the wound.
I think you should test that theory. Cut yourself and rub juice from a leek into the wound and tell us how it feels.
It's also likely to give you heavy metal poisoning if you use too much of it too frequently.
Copper isn't a heavy metal, it's absolutely poisonous, but not a heavy metal.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Then there's marinol. They extracted the THC from pot in some mis-guided effort to get the medicinal effects without admitting they screwed up with the war on drugs. And of course, it was to be far more expensive than even the black market herb it replaced. It failed since they lost at least half of the beneficial effects and potentiated the tendency to cause psychosis. Turns out the CBD is as important as the THC.
Not completely true, yes Marinol was developed because growing weed was illegal, but it was not just pure extracted THC, it was "synthetic THC". As I understood it, the Marinol drug was developed because a lot of people did not want to smoke weed, they wanted a simple and easy to swallow pill.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Your doctor doesn't want you to know aboyt this 500-year-old remedy for venereal disease.
Hint: it's mercury.
Not every old remedy is good for you. If you get into the history of medicine, you'll find lots of old remedies that are harmful.
I don't know man, I haven't had any disease trepanning or a good blood letting couldn't deal with, well there was this one time where I had to drink a gallon or mercury to get over a...ahem..personal disease.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Personally, I've seen a lot of this. "Retro" in medicine not only is hip, but it actually works. And often better than synthesized medicine.
You have to know what you are doing though, which includes knowing what modern remedies acutally do and what they were originally built for.
Example: I treaded my reflux with healing earth and baking soda (Natriumhydrogencarbonat (German term)). The regular doctor would've given me super expensive PPI and the effect probably wouldn't have been half as good. It took me basically 3 days to get my acid levels back to normal.
Example 2: Healing Earth/Healing Clay. No more anti-biotics or synthesized remedies when I have stomach problems due to an infection or stress, thank you. This stuff has upped my health measurably ever since the local RPG dealer recommended it to me back in college. I've used it to externally treat neuro-dermitis, stomach problems and acidic cold sores. This stuff does wonders. For some people it's tough to swallow though. I usually take a heaped table-spoon of dry healing clay (grain size 1 or ultra-fine) and wash it down with a glass of water. You have to brush your teeth afterwards, otherwise you'll be scrunching on what feels like fine grained sand. ... Which it basically is, in a way. :-)
Example 3: Fresh onions and fresh pressed onion juice for treating ear or throat infections. It smells, but it works. The soothing effect is almost instant, no thinking what a synthesized remedy with that effect would have to do. I use onions marinated in honey as cough syrup - it's the best there is. It's a bit of a hassle to make, so I do use stuff from the store aswell when I need it and am low on time, but the self made stuff beats the stuff from the store in both effect and taste, hands down.
These are a few examples of old-school remedies that are measurably better that the stuff pharmaceuticals try to push on you. However, there is modern medicine that I do use, albeit as an 'educated patient'. Modern anti-hystaminica for instance has gotten pretty good and effective with negilible side-effects.
Bottom line: There are remedies that have been around for thousands of years and still are the best there is for treating certain conditions, perhaps also for the very simple fact that we've evolved around those things available to us. That, of cource, doesn't mean you should shun modern medicine entirely or go all-out homepathic or some other weird stuff.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
That's why you subject the ancient remedies to modern testing.
And even in cases where they're harmful, at the time it was probably better to suffer with the side-effects than have the original disease. It's no different today; every medication can have negative side effects; we're just better at designing and manufacturing drugs to minimize or eliminate these side effects than before.
Leek has similar healing properties like gallic and onions, the plants are closely related anyway.
Perhaps you should read up how much alcohol wine has, and how much is left over after using it for 'cooking' something.
I would really wonder if there is any alcohol left after finishing the product. Certainly the bacteria are unaffected by the rest alcohol.
I suspect the wine is used as an acid to get copper and zinc ions dissolving into the salve from the pot it js made in ... also there are plenty of healthy stuff in red wine ... if they don't get destroyed during the cooking they might strengthen a immune response.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The definition if a metal is a 'heavy' metal is a chemical one, not a physical one, so yes, copper and for that part, if you did not know it, aluminium are heavy metals and in the wrong dosage as poisoning as lead or mercury (which are physically more dense/heavy).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You forgot to tell him to use a wound/cut/scratch not on his hand or fingers :) otherwise he wont be typing us the result of the experiment soon ... what an idiot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Thanx Jon, thanx for your opinion, Jon, however it is wrong though. :)
In every nation I know about (not nations I know, but nations I know about the plumping system) using copper for pipes for drinking water: is forbidden because it is similar poisoness as lead is.
Copper is used for the heating system, not for drinking water, actually those circuits need to be 100% separated from each other.
However you likely live in a country where legislation only makes regulations after some majour hazard or majour suing
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That's what brownies and oil are for.
But the point stands even moreso since it was synthetic and still cost more than the black market herb.
Actually, since this is a salve to be used externally, internal use isn't a consideration for this formulation. People regularly get that amount of copper on their skin from jewelry (including copper bracelets) Some get a minor rash from it or a green skin discoloration, both much better than MRSA.
What people need is medications they can actually afford. The cost of drugs in the U.S. is shameful.
It should be marketed as a cologne of lotion. That way the rules flip-flop and pretty much if the user's skin doesn't actually come off while applying it, it's A-OK with regulators.
I'm not saying the research shouldn't be done, an internal use form would be good. A concentrated form would be good. But none of that should stand in the way of the known effective salve.
I don't think anyone is trying to keep people from mixing up their own version or from marketing this stuff as a cosmetics product. They are trying to keep people from marketing it as a medical product, for obvious reasons (and no, not "because the cartel says so" but because if we allow this stuff without stringent testing we must also allow other stuff without stringent testing, which is a bad idea).
And while this may be a lotion, MRSA is enough of a problem that a large number of people are very much interested in an internal use version of this, ASAP. If it does work, of course, which will require reproduction of TFA's experiment's findings.
And while copper on the skin is not much of a problem, copper inside the body can be.
Of course drugs are way too expensive in the USA, just like everything else health-related. But still, the rules are there for a reason (and other countries have cheaper, yet similarly effective healthcare, which indicates that solutions besides deregulation of drug development and marketing are possible).
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
So you prefer PVC for your water pipes? That tends to grow nasty stuff in it, and not be great at dealing with temperature shifts. Or cast iron, which rusts? Steel?
Copper is used in MANY systems, and almost universally in plumbing, the world over. US, UK, Mexico and Canada all use it as their primary potable water piping solution, and even the EU uses it commonly: https://books.google.com/books... water pipe european union&f=false
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
The common pipe style in fact is iron. It does not rust at all as the water does not contain oxygen and thus can not oxidize the iron. There are trace amounts of air in the water, so you see a bit of rust after maintenance, when the water was standing for a few days and/or work on the pipes lead to vibrations.
Of course the closer you come to the houses the more often the iron is coated with zinc or similar materials, the long distance distribution network is steel or concrete.
Copper is no where used in potable water distribution.
Perhaps there are old pipes which don't need to be removed for what ever reason (did not read your link), however new installations in the EU are absolutely forbidden.
Actually I never have seen a copper drinking water pipe in all my life, and I'm close to 50.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
As a side note, or follow up to my previous post: PVC does not lead to 'growing nasty stuff' inside of it. ....
Potable water is so pure that you have less than a handful of microbes/monocellular life per cubic meter in it.
Actually finding such trace amounts is extremely difficult, you basically have to evapour 99% of the water and still don't have a chance of finding the remaining microbes.
However your country might be different
Your link btw, does not load, so no idea about the talk about copper in it .... however the google notice 'two of two hits' clearly shows that usage of copper can't be relevant :) perhaps you should read what you find via google before linking it?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
As another side note, follow up ...
Actually you should really read the links you post. In your link EU regulations are 'quoted' as a guide line for the US to remove copper or lower copper concentrations in potable water.
Enough said ....
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Ever notice that an aspirin bottle contains white or pink pills, not chopped-up willow bark? Willow bark was important to put people on the road to aspirin, but there are better ways to deliver the active ingredient. There were quite a few compounds tried before the one now known as aspirin, which delivered the pain relief with fewer side effects. A lot of money went into testing all of those. In order to help patients, every entity in the process has to make money in some form.
For a pharmaceutical company to do that sort of research, it's going to have to have a potential return, which is where the patent comes in. It gives the company a temporary monopoly position on the drug so they can make their research money back. This makes drugs too expensive for some people in the US, which in my opinion is a problem with the US health care system and not drug patents.
Anybody selling the original substance had better not be making medical claims about it, without providing good evidence to the FDA. The FDA doesn't stop people from marketing herbal remedies, as long as they don't make unverified claims. So far, there's lab work suggesting that it might well work, not good evidence that it's safe and effective on humans.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Luckily for doctors, MRSA is often a skin infection. So, even if this turns out to be "topical use only," maybe you put something like this on the wound site where the infection started, and you dose the patient with Vancomycin or other high-potency antibiotics to knock down anything internal - this might be a faster, more complete, and less detrimental regimen to use for a lot of people who end up with MRSA infections.
Heavy doses of vancomycin can fuck you up big time too, probably more so than a short, high dose of copper would; And it's possible that exposure to BOTH harmful compounds could be minimized by using them in a 'cocktail' form.
As far as being a new class of drugs - stranger things have happened. Allicin in garlic has also been found to have some antimicrobial properties, so it's entirely possible that there's some sort of interaction between the the many, many compounds undoubtedly in this brew, that intensify each other's effects, as well. And, to the original point - you don't have to chew willow bark to get the medicine from it anymore, we've learned how to synthesize a very pure and readily bio-available form of the active ingredient -- more research may find a way to combine the best parts of these treatments without needing you to coat your body in copper, leeks, garlic, bile, and wine anymore. Just because this is a primitive form, there's no reason to think we can't isolate and improve on the active ingredient(s) just as we have with literally every other medicine known to man.
The article says that none of the ingredients work in isolation. Since, as you say, they are individually somewhat antibacterial, it's likely that part of the potency of the mix comes from combining antibiotics with different modes of action; if the target tries to avoid the action of antibacterial component X, it runs smack into compound Y. And vice versa.(bile salts are a detergent, and would attack cell membranes, btw, in addition to the alcohol, copper, allicin effects) Sounds like the ancient who came up with this mix was reasonably sophisticated.
One problem with such natural remedies is standardization. As the article says, a prior try at the same mixture ended with a malodorous slime. That's one reason for standardized pharmaceuticals built up from isolating the active ingredients in these kinds of things and putting them together in a controlled manner. Along with, of course, the fact that such compounds can indeed be patented.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The definition if a metal is a 'heavy' metal is a chemical one, not a physical one, so yes, copper and for that part, if you did not know it, aluminium are heavy metals and in the wrong dosage as poisoning as lead or mercury (which are physically more dense/heavy).
It's a pretty loose definition. Essentially, a heavy metal is whatever causes heavy metal poisoning in any given situation. Which can include as light as alumin(i)um; probably anything heavier than sodium could qualify. Sodium in excess has its own problems with biological processes, but we don't count it as heavy metal poisoning, it's more ionic and less just binding to stuff.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
At the same time, good luck getting a doctor to suggest a $5 jar of salve over a $200 tube of prescription salve, even if it's the very same stuff.
That's a real problem. Many doctors default to the new name brand X rather than the tried and true generic Y even when just the co-pay for X will cost more than Y. Often, X will be no better than Y for the majority of patients. As a result, some people pay WAY too much and some end up not getting X or Y. A tiny handful avoid mild itching that could have been fixed by switching them to X if they cared to.
Makes them feel superior in their ignorance in some fucked up way. As we all know, stupid can't be fixed
Actually, the United States aren't doing that bad with respect to generics. Almost 67% of all medications prescribed in 2007 were generics, up from 45% in 2000. (Those numbers are from Wikipedia but sourced.)
But yeah, healthcare in America is still way expensive and IIRC doctors are extensively marketed to by pharma companies, which doesn't help them make informed decisions about generics. Perhaps that could be better regulated. (Or perhaps some other approach might help to improve things. Perhaps that approach has even been taken already; I'm not that well informed about the American pharma market.)
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Which Wikipedia article is that? I'd like to follow the cite since other figures suggest much less generics.
The German Wikipedia article on generic drugs. I assumed that the English article would contain similar data. That's an assumption I really need to drop; it virtually never holds.
The cites are as follows:
2006 data: The Generic Pharmaceutical Association: ANNUAL REPORT 2008. Generics: The Right Choice for Better Health. February 7th, 2008; downloaded on December 28th, 2012.
2000 data: World Health Organisation: The World Medicines Situation. September 8th, 2004; downloaded on December 31st, 2012.
(Note: I screwed up here by overlooking a footnote in the Wikipedia article. The 45% figure is not from 2000 but from 1998.)
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
The English language page is far less informative. I can understand the assumption, but I agree it doesn't seem to hold as often as I would expect.
Alas, the first cite is a 404 page now.
I believe there is some confusion in the figures. That too is understandable since we have a number of strange (to me) corner cases here. For example, a prescription drugs that are nothing more than large doses of fish oil and niacin. (The niacin costs $600). Both of those are sold over the counter as supplements (not categorized as drugs at all) for a tiny fraction of the cost (perhaps 2%), yet the prescription drugs sell.
I'm not sure how they account for drugs where the patent has expired but the name brand is still sold at the inflated price in spite of the fully generic form being much cheaper. That situation is improving somewhat only because the patient is allowed to ask the pharmacist to provide the generic version of a prescribed name brand in many cases.