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Antibiotic-Resistant E Coli Reaches The US For The First Time (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the there's-a-first-for-everything dept.

New submitter maharvey writes: A woman in Pennsylvania has contracted a strain of E Coli that is unaffected by all known legal antibiotics, including the antibiotics of last resort. We have had bacteria that were resistant, but this is the first bacteria that is completely immune. Such bacteria were known in China, but since the woman has not traveled recently it means she contracted it in the wild in the USA. This is a major step toward the terrifying post-antibiotic world.

6 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Blame the farmers .. yeah ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Before you wanna place blames, ask yourself --- if you are a farmer and you only make money selling "LIVING" livestock, would you do everything you can to keep your animal alive - until the second before they got inside slaughterhouse?

    Farmers don't get paid for sick/dying/dead animals, that is why they feed those animals crazy amount of whatever antibiotics that they can find

    If you guys really want to place blame, blame the government instead

    The pharmaceutical companies invested huge amount of $ to develop the antibiotics, only to meet with government regulation that prohibit them to push it to the human medical channels (new antibiotics have to be 'quarantine for x number of years' to have a 'weapon of last resort' against whatever drug resistant bugs that they come across)

    This stupid regulation only forces the big pharma to go another route, and push their product into non-human channels - the farm animals, which the FDA doesn't have any jurisdiction on

    Now the superbugs come home and bite our ass - what are we going to do?

    Ban the use of antibiotic on the farm animals?

    That will only create a lucrative black markets for farm-grade antibiotics

    1. Re:Blame the farmers .. yeah ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is only a problem for factory farms. Regular farms don't need to rely on antibiotics to keep animals healthy.

      We should ban factory farming techniques.

      It will drive the price of meat up significantly. That's fine; a whole generation of first-worlders can learn just how protein-rich a plant-based diet can be (before you object, be aware that the shaolin monks (the most powerful athletes in the world) live on a strictly vegan diet from the day they start training (at around 5 years of age). If THEY can do it, so can you!)

    2. Re:Blame the farmers .. yeah ! by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Informative

      Personal responsibility (or rather "don't give a shit about anyone but yourself") yes. But god forbid corporations would be responsible for anything they do! That could endanger jobs! Not to mention profits.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Blame the farmers .. yeah ! by dow · · Score: 5, Informative

      Real life farmer here. Maybe is the USA cows in pastures are a lie, but in the UK ours spend the summer out in the fields. It's cheaper to keep them in a pasture than in a barn. Also, we don't feed our cows antibiotics. Again, that's something they might do in the US, but in Europe antibiotics in cattle feeds have been banned for quite some time. We have some factory farms in the UK also, but nothing the size of many US herds. One farmer wanted to build an eight thousand head farm, but it made national news and there was massive public resistance. They do not want that sort of farm in the UK.

      If you want to blame farmers for using such practises, blame yourself for looking for the cheapest food you can get. Supermarkets compete on prices. You wanted cheap food, you got cheap food. Now, you realise the price of that cheap food. The farmers were just giving people what they wanted, the cheapest food they could produce. Did you ever pick up an item at the supermarket and think that it was too cheap? When it comes to many quality foods, people should really stop asking themselves "Why is it so expensive?" and ask "Why is the other stuff so cheap?"

  2. Re:Nice job humanity! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    One minute you blame government, the next you say we should listen to "public health officials." I think you contradict yourself.

    Not a contraction at all. The government as a whole can fail the people, while individuals within the government can warn of the impending threat.

    Watch Frontline's "The problem with antibiotics", there a member of the CDC, a "public official", warns about feeding antibiotics to livestock, however the CDC cannot regulate animal food, that's the FDA's role. But the FDA's hands are tied by Senators who have been corrupted by big ag's money. Hence, our government failed us because "corporations are people".

  3. Re:Antibiotic abuse and biodiversity by PCM2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well... we lack anything at all to stop it from doing so.

    We may lack anything. But she has something ... it's called an immune system.

    Note, also, that the Reuters story has been corrected. They analyzed the woman's bacteria and noticed it would be resistant to colistin, a "last-resort antibiotic." It's not resistant to all the other ones, too -- unlike what the first version of the story said. It's just that we know bacteria can be resistant to all the other ones, and it wouldn't be so hard for this strain to pick up those other genes, resulting in an unstoppable bacteria. This is not that unstoppable bacteria; but it's proven once again that it is theoretically possible for one to exist.

    --
    Breakfast served all day!