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Antibiotic-Resistant E Coli Reaches The US For The First Time (reuters.com)
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.
Perhaps this woman's imminent death can serve as a rallying point to ban the (grossly irresponsible) use of antibiotics in foodstock fodder.
Expect the foodstock industry to fight any such suggestion tooth and nail of course. Such a ban will cost them money since foodstock put on weight more slowly when not dosed with low levels of antibiotics, and any scare stories about antibiotics-resistant bacteria are "so many radical treehuggers' fantasies" of course.
"Huh ... it's already happened you say? I thought we had another five years at least. Hmm ... denounce the linkage a speculation based on evolution theory, increase the lobbyist budget, and see if we can't get a deal with a nice understanding conservative presidential candidate."
Why oh why do we need to actually see an antibiotics-resistant bacteria infect somebody before we'll acknowledge the blindingly obvious about to happen?
Silver. (Google 'silver colloid') Still in use today to sterilize touchable surfaces in hospitals. Sorry, it can't be patented so no big corporation will be interested. The medical establishment will only steer you to patented products, so be wary of their advice. You can even make your own. Far more adaptable than other antibiotics. Drink it; inhale it; drop it in your eyes; lavish it on skin burns; spray it on icky surfaces you have to touch... Some minor precautions advised (don't drink large quantities over a long period of time).
...omphaloskepsis often...
Total Failure of Government and Society and not a good sign for the future of the human race. I personally have been well aware of the risks of Antibiotic-Resistant for over 20 years. This was the text book example of natural selection in my High School Biology class.
Instead of listening to the scientists and public health officals on the risks, we have let the greed and money in big ag run make our laws. We let them dump antibiotics in our livestock food in so we could have cheap meat and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Welcome back to the pre-antibiotic era where a cut can be deadly and hospitals can kill you. Nice job humanity!
While what you say may be true, I disagree with your conclusions and your hindsight.
There should be no problem giving massive amounts of antibiotics to livestock. In fact, we should be giving *more*, or at least *more effective* antibiotics to livestock.
The regulatory problem wasn't from giving out too many antibiotics, it was because the regulations are so stiff that it's impossible to create new antibiotics. The fundamental flaw in the system was to make government bureaucrats responsible for risk, while making drug companies responsible for that risk.
This has led to risk-averse government bureaucrats setting the bar so high that it's become impossible to make new drugs.
The Hippocratic oath reads (in part): "above all, do no harm". This was rewritten by the FAA to be: "do no harm at any cost!"
It currently costs upwards of a billion dollars to bring a new prescription drug to market. No company can afford to make a new drug unless it can apply to everyone as a maintenance dose.
Viagra was only developed because it was a noticed side-effect of a high blood pressure medicine.
Suppose we had 25 approved antibiotics, and used them in 5-year increments in a rotating scale. Each year 5 of the 25 antibiotics could be used, and each year one would be rotated out and another added. Each antibiotic would be used for 5 years and then disappear for 20. It would take a very long time under that scheme for diseases to develop immunity.
We can't do that any more, because it's impossible to develop new antibiotics.
There's lots of common-sense ways we could change this, but we don't.
We're killing ourselves from an abundance of caution.
This is a stupid question, but I've always wondered why old (very old, unused for decades) antibacterials can't be resurrected with a restored effectiveness. I liken it to the idea of rotating crops so the field soils aren't totally stripped of nutrients by planting the same crop year after year.
I mean: what does in benefit rather simple organisms to continue to pass along resistance to a spectrum of anti-biotic that their ancestors hadn't been exposed to in decades (and that's how many bacterial generations)? Isn't there a 'carrying capacity' or 'memory limit' to what can be added to their code that has to be slowly deprecated / de-prioritized just for physical space constraints? Asserting they have the Borg-like ability to perfectly add to their defenses without end, sounds a bit too apocalyptic to me.