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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.
I regularly have my Russian women consume vodka before placing their proverbial lips on my appendage. That is, after I place my tinfoil hat on and cross my fingers. So far so good. My anecdotal evidence supports your inquiry AND you read it here on the internet so it must be true.
Biodiversity is a good thing, but we're destroying it. We need to allow nature to create new antibiotics and use those as needed.
Also, there are some fucking absurd abuses of antibiotics. Doctors are way too quick to wrote prescriptions when they aren't necessary. We need to stop prescribing antibiotics when they aren't necessary for infections that will be stopped by the body's immune system or as preventive measures.
Furthermore, we shouldn't be wasting antibiotics on animals, especially for cattle. I'm sorry that one of the animals in your herd is sick. There's no fucking reason to put antibiotics in the feed of all of your cattle. That's fucking ridiculous. Don't use antibiotics on cattle.
This is a fucking big deal. People who misuse antibiotics should lose their license to practice medicine. I'd also support prison time for it.
what about not using antibiotics on living animals? They serve as a feeding ground for antibiotics. The price would be that you have to pay more for products that include flesh, because you would have to isolate the animals better, in order to stop spreading illnesses.
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!
Until you turn blue.
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.
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?"