The problem with that method would be that only a small percentage of the S. aureus actually pick up the plasmids. That number becomes amplified quickly because the ones that did not pick it up get killed by the antibiotics and the resistant ones have free acess to food and resources (that would be the patient). The other problem is that DNA violates the two main tenets of a good drug: easy to manufacture and deliverable. The best way to mass produce DNA is to clone it into a bacterium which does not work with a "suicide" sequence. Prodicing it in vitro is expensive and impractical for longer sequences. Also a small piece of DNA is far bulkier than any drugs out there which makes it hard to deliver at the site of the infection. One of the great hurdles in Gene Therapy is finding an efficient way of delivering the foreign DNA into the target cells.
We actually ran some experiments on this and within a few generations the antibiotic resistance genes disappeared if there were no antibiotics in the growth medium which suggests that in the absence of the pressure from the drugs the bacteria without them do better (this could be due to the metabolic cost of maintaining the extra DNA). This is backed up by clinical observations that the most virulent and resistant strains are much more common in the hospital.
One radical suggestion that has been made is to ban the use of an antibiotic for a period of time so that the resistance fades, then reintroduce it. Unfortunately this is hard to implement because some drugs have uses for which there is no better alternative and the manufacturers are not kee on stopping production (and profits).
I have actually worked in S. aureus research and it is a very scary bug. Some of the strains we had collected were resistant to 12 different antibiotics and even Arsenic.
The main reason S. aureus becomes so easily resistant to new antibiotics is because it easily picks up circular strands of DNA called plasmids which carry resistance genes on them. The most likely source of the resistance gene is not cattle but other bacteria present in the hospitals. Enterococcus, a cousin of S. aureus which lives in a person's gut is highly resistant to Vancomycin and it was expected that sooner or later this will be passed to S. aureus. There have been cases of this happening in Japan a few years ago.
The best place to pick up a nasty germ is in the hospital since most patiets there are on antibiotics so the only bugs around are highly resistant to a wide range of drugs.
Conspiracy theorists will interpret anything as further proof of their theory. Getting into arguments with them is pointless because everything will be interpreted as further proof that things "are being covered up".
NASA is better served by ignoring the cooks and moving on.
can see this becoming a must have for physicians especially the wireless connectivity.
It could be used during rounds to pull up patient's charts from the database, update progress notes, order new medications and have them checked for drug interactions on the fly. You could order labs pull up previous old lab results, checkj radiology reports etc. And you could instantly send new orders into the database which would be automatically routed to the lab or pharmacy.
MD's have been very enthusiastic adopters of Palm Pilots and I can see hospitals shell out the money to set up a system using this. It would save a lot of time, money and paperwork.
I hope the handwriting recognition is up to par because doctors are notorious for having bad handwriting
There are also some scientific applications where more power is always needed. Some of the data mining we do at work wold not be possible without some serious computing muscle.
It's even more of an issue for people working on protein structure and protein folding dynamics.
I know I've gone through 5 different OS's in the last six month including different distos and 3 flavors of Windows, they all have had their issues.
I just think that inexperienced users are much more likely to get stumped by fairly basic tasks using Linux since they are less likely to have experience using it. On the other hand since they will likely not be running it as root they are much less likely to seriously break something on their machine.
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The problem with that method would be that only a small percentage of the S. aureus actually pick up the plasmids. That number becomes amplified quickly because the ones that did not pick it up get killed by the antibiotics and the resistant ones have free acess to food and resources (that would be the patient). The other problem is that DNA violates the two main tenets of a good drug: easy to manufacture and deliverable. The best way to mass produce DNA is to clone it into a bacterium which does not work with a "suicide" sequence. Prodicing it in vitro is expensive and impractical for longer sequences. Also a small piece of DNA is far bulkier than any drugs out there which makes it hard to deliver at the site of the infection. One of the great hurdles in Gene Therapy is finding an efficient way of delivering the foreign DNA into the target cells.
We actually ran some experiments on this and within a few generations the antibiotic resistance genes disappeared if there were no antibiotics in the growth medium which suggests that in the absence of the pressure from the drugs the bacteria without them do better (this could be due to the metabolic cost of maintaining the extra DNA). This is backed up by clinical observations that the most virulent and resistant strains are much more common in the hospital. One radical suggestion that has been made is to ban the use of an antibiotic for a period of time so that the resistance fades, then reintroduce it. Unfortunately this is hard to implement because some drugs have uses for which there is no better alternative and the manufacturers are not kee on stopping production (and profits).
I have actually worked in S. aureus research and it is a very scary bug. Some of the strains we had collected were resistant to 12 different antibiotics and even Arsenic. The main reason S. aureus becomes so easily resistant to new antibiotics is because it easily picks up circular strands of DNA called plasmids which carry resistance genes on them. The most likely source of the resistance gene is not cattle but other bacteria present in the hospitals. Enterococcus, a cousin of S. aureus which lives in a person's gut is highly resistant to Vancomycin and it was expected that sooner or later this will be passed to S. aureus. There have been cases of this happening in Japan a few years ago. The best place to pick up a nasty germ is in the hospital since most patiets there are on antibiotics so the only bugs around are highly resistant to a wide range of drugs.
You mean Lucas borrows material from other people and does not credit them for it. I can't believe it. /naive
Conspiracy theorists will interpret anything as further proof of their theory. Getting into arguments with them is pointless because everything will be interpreted as further proof that things "are being covered up". NASA is better served by ignoring the cooks and moving on.
can see this becoming a must have for physicians especially the wireless connectivity. It could be used during rounds to pull up patient's charts from the database, update progress notes, order new medications and have them checked for drug interactions on the fly. You could order labs pull up previous old lab results, checkj radiology reports etc. And you could instantly send new orders into the database which would be automatically routed to the lab or pharmacy. MD's have been very enthusiastic adopters of Palm Pilots and I can see hospitals shell out the money to set up a system using this. It would save a lot of time, money and paperwork. I hope the handwriting recognition is up to par because doctors are notorious for having bad handwriting
There are also some scientific applications where more power is always needed. Some of the data mining we do at work wold not be possible without some serious computing muscle. It's even more of an issue for people working on protein structure and protein folding dynamics.
I know I've gone through 5 different OS's in the last six month including different distos and 3 flavors of Windows, they all have had their issues. I just think that inexperienced users are much more likely to get stumped by fairly basic tasks using Linux since they are less likely to have experience using it. On the other hand since they will likely not be running it as root they are much less likely to seriously break something on their machine.
I can't wait to read the posts at www.linuxnewbie.org from irate bureaucrats that cannot get their documents to print properly.