Posted on 08/23/2010 12:17:34 PM PDT by Publius804
Just 65 years ago, David Livermore's paternal grandmother died following an operation to remove her appendix. It didn't go well, but it was not the surgery that killed her. She succumbed to a series of infections that the pre-penicillin world had no drugs to treat. Welcome to the future.
The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight.
Hyperbole? Unfortunately not. The highly serious journal Lancet Infectious Diseases yesterday posed the question itself over a paper revealing the rapid spread of multi-drug-resistant bacteria. "Is this the end of antibiotics?" it asked.
Doctors and scientists have not been complacent, but the paper by Professor Tim Walsh and colleagues takes the anxiety to a new level. Last September, Walsh published details of a gene he had discovered, called NDM 1, which passes easily between types of bacteria called enterobacteriaceae such as E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae and makes them resistant to almost all of the powerful, last-line group of antibiotics called carbapenems. Yesterday's paper revealed that NDM 1 is widespread in India and has arrived here as a result of global travel and medical tourism for, among other things, transplants, pregnancy care and cosmetic surgery.
"In many ways, this is it," Walsh tells me. "This is potentially the end. There are no antibiotics in the pipeline that have activity against NDM 1-producing enterobacteriaceae. We have a bleak window of maybe 10 years, where we are going to have to use the antibiotics we have very wisely...
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
So on the one hand, Drs would like us to believe they are of the highest ethics and stictly looking our for our good.
But on the other hand, in cases like this they punt and blame the lawyers.
Which is it?
You like blue complexions, eh?
Silver colloids may be useful for some things, but you have to keep the blue color in mind.
This article completely ignored the greatest impetus to wasteful use of both antibiotics and painkillers: elective plastic surgery.
When someone has had their boobs “redone” for 4 or 5 times, as is not unusual (I think Demi Moore has had several different sizes, for example), or all kinds of other vanity surgeries, they often ahve been given loads of antibiotics to “prevent” or treat infections, along with loads of narcotics for pain.
Also there is loads of antibiotic use associated with follow-on care for tatoos and piercings. It’s not all that uncommon for a person with a tongue piercing to end up taking antibiotics for a year, trying to get an infection under control.
These are some of the kinds of surgeries and procedures that, not only run up healthcare costs, but which are helping to make it impossible for someone to get a life-saving transplant in the future.
On the other hand, genetic research is really starting to get to the bottom of how the bugs work. They are getting close to being able to find antigen vulnerabilities on a molecular scale and exploiting them. Can’t find a link to this right now but I read about researchers have found handle common to all flu virus, that doesn’t mutate, that can stop them from multiplying.
It really is a race. I couldn’t handicap which
which side was going to win.
Why?
Like oil, he points out, antibiotic usefulness is finite. And the cost of drug resistance is not reflected in the price of the drug. "If you consider antibiotic sensitivity as a resource like oil, you want to maintain that by introducing a tax," he says. It would be worldwide and the proceeds could fund new drug development.
But should you tax life-saving drugs, especially in poor countries? "If you don't do anything, there won't be any antibiotics anyway," says James starkly. "At least it is a suggestion of something that could be done."
But doctors also have the trial lawyers breathing down their neck. Without tort reform, doctors will continue defensive prescribing, especially when the patient gets nasty demanding the drug.
Yes.
But everybody who wishes should continue to scream, gibber and run around in small circles. The exercise will do them good.
What ever happened to swine flu?
(Just saying.)
You are quite right.
One of the really terrifying scenarios is drug resistant tuberculosis. It has started to occur in poor environments; inner town ghettos and in Russian jails, where patients either are not given long enough cures, or they are selling the medicine to get money for narcotics.
But on the other hand, in cases like this they punt and blame the lawyers.
Which is it?
You can have the highest ethics and strictly look out for the good of others while also criticizing people who have the lowest ethics and who look out only for their own good.
It's not an either/or decision.
The oil of oregano thing really works.
K - 12 schools closed and college students were quarantined.
Quarantined.
“Learn how to use garlic, honey, oil of oregano, etc.”
I’ve had mrsa in my spine for 2 years. Don’t think salad dressing is going to work if vanco, bactrim, zyvox, cubicin, etc hasn’t worked.
Here’s a link to what I was talking about. Not exactly a peer reviewed journal put points to real research:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.ee3c200ad5a228b3cd0e2c3db179012f.2a1&show_article=1
Scientists close in on ‘universal’ vaccine for flu: study
Feb 22 01:32 PM US/Eastern
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Pedestrians watch as pigeons fly at a shopping area in Hong Kong on Februar...
Clinical Trials on Humans Could Begin Within a Couple of Years
Scientists on Sunday unveiled lab-made human antibodies that can disable several types of influenza, including highly-lethal H5N1 bird flu and the “Spanish Flu” strain that killed tens of millions in 1918.
Tested in mice, the antibodies work by binding to a previously obscure structure in the flu virus which, when blocked, sabotages the pathogen’s ability to enter the cell it is trying to infect, according to the study.
Because this structure — described by one scientist as a “viral Achilles’ heel” — is genetically stable and has resisted mutation over time, the antibodies are effective against many different strains.
The breakthrough “holds considerable promise for further development into a medical tool to treat and prevent seasonal as well as pandemic influenza,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped fund the study.
There are many natural things we can fall back on, I agree, in many cases without anti-biotics many will die, but there is much we know now that we didn’t. And there are very powerful natural anti-biotics, all your ammo might not be as life saving as you think.
The silver lining is that a bacteria that is resistant against all types of antibiotics is probably overburdened with energetically expensive metabolites. In an environment devoid of antibiotics those bacteria will probably lose in competition with wild strain (non-resistant) bacteria.
Unfortuantely hospitals will always run the risk of creating a perfect environment for the resistant agents Therefore one must never save on hospital hygiene.
Something the NHS should note!!
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