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While this is certainly a cause for concern, this article strikes me as unduly alarmist, almost sensationalist. The medical community has been predicting this biological disaster for a decade now, and it is not coming to pass any more than the AIDS pandemic.

I'm always a little skeptical when I hear these apocalyptic predictions. Fear is never a safe motivator for radical social change.

I agree. The author talks about the millions killed by the bubonic plague (although it's never been definitively proven what organism caused the plague) and the hundreds of thousands of Civil War soldiers killed by wound infections.

She then describes a handful of case reports of modern MRSA infections. But where's the hundreds of thousands or millions dying? Why does she have to list individual cases if the situation is so bad?

She also needs to better research her pharmacology. Vancomycin is not the last resort. Many strains of MRSA are susceptible to minocycline (Vibramycin), or even trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (Bactrim or Septra). Linezolid (Zyvox) is a relatively new drug active against MRSA. Mupirocin (Bactroban) is a topical drug active against MRSA; it can be applied directly to an infected skin lesion.

I work in an ER, and see very few serious resistant infections in young, healthy people. Most MRSA infections are, as she correctly notes, complications in older, sicker patients.

On the other hand, I am alarmed about the reports of MRSA infections showing up in swimmers at Daytona Beach (my home town!) or gay men without immune problems. They're still anecdotal cases, but my eyebrow is raised.

Mupirocin (Bactroban) is a topical drug active against MRSA; it can be applied directly to an infected skin lesion.

The problem with these topical drugs, even if specific for the pathogen, is that the infection is not recognized as resistant early enough - the necrotizing bacteria may spread to internal organs within just hours. I spoke to a dermatologist who said he could actually watch the progression of the dead tissue move up the leg of an infected patient. No medical facility is going to bring out the heavy hitter antibiotics just because a patient shows up with a boil. And if they did a whole new legion of resistant bacteria would be launched.

I agree it's alarmist.

I don't think the bacteria are any worse than if we had never used antibiotics. It's just that we would have been dead sooner. So it's not like we are creating a nightmare.

I also object to the turn overuse of antibiotics. Seems to me that the problem is underuse of antibiotics. Not knocking infections completely out. Not quarantining individuals with compromised immune systems. Etc.