Re: ??

On Feb 8, 10:11 am, "songbird" <songb...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Allison Turner- wrote:

...

Well, all I can say is that the microbiologists doing the actual
research, and probably many of the drug companies looking for new
antimicrobial drugs, do not agree with you.  The microbiologists I
talked to who were doing research in Chicago were pretty fucking
alarmed.  Yes, we've done *really* amazing things since the pre-
immunization and pre-antibiotic days.

  everything i'm reading says that it's not a matter of if it's
a matter of when and if we can catch whatever bug it is
quickly enough before it spreads.  luckily they are having
some success with modeling and predicting how things
do spread that will help, but in the end all it takes is one
person breaking quarantine and then getting to a hub of
dispersion and things get horribly worse quicker than anyone
can respond.

  polio is not eradicated in the world, there are still pockets of
it.  the same for many of the other diseases mentioned.

  right now a huge fear is drug resistant tuberculosis.  right along
with bird flu, and other flu we have also got drug resistant pneumonia.
which has killed people i know recently.

But those antibiotics we've developed over years are going to fail -
only a matter of time - and we aren't finding new ones fast enough
to keep up.  Sooner or later, things will break.  There are already
strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (bacteria causing tuberculosis)
and Staph. aureus (staph infections) that are resistant to *all* of
the drugs we have.  There's an entire wing in the pharmacy building
I worked in that is devoted to finding the next M. tuberculosis drug.
Hospitals panic when the resistant Staph. a. is found in a room, and
evacuate everyone and mop the place down with strong bleach.

  *nods*

And where is multi-resistant Staph a. found?  In hospitals.  Why?
because all of the drugs are being used there, so that's the only
place that multi-resistant strains will evolve.  Charming, innit?

  among other reasons.  i think it's also found there because that
is where sick people go and where those with already weakened
immune systems are exposed to other critters.

  something to encourage in health care will be in home care.
bringing the skills and the tools to the patient.

  another good thing would probably be in making sure that
we dose anything we clean to get rid of bad bacteria with
bacteria that are benign so that there isn't an empty food
source with no competition for the bacteria to get re-established.
a kind of yogurt culture spray for a hospital room or...





A cell in your body (in tissue that's growing quickly) will divide
and become two about once a day.  Bacteria divide and become two
every 20 minutes or so... which if you do the math, comes out to
some whopping high number by tomorrow.  Actually, given crowding
and imperfect supply of nutrients, etc., you might get only ten
billion bacteria in 24 hours.  Now take, say, a mere million of them
and give them some random mutations. Most will die, some will survive,
and a very few of them (it only takes one) in the presence of a weak
amount of drug will survive and thrive, because the mutation it
received happens to make it resistant to the drug).  Or take another
hundred or two of the original 10 billion and put them in contact
with some other already-resistant bacteria, who will gladly spit out
a plasmid coding for the resistance (so helpful and sharing a
community, bacteria are).  It isn't very long before that one
bacterium you had yesterday has produced progeny that are resistant
to whatever you might hand them.

  yep.  they do share and they will do it when stressed by the environment
(cue anti-bacterials).

Antibacterials only work because we swamp the bacteria with them -
killing them before they have a chance to develop resistance.  But
if you blithely pour those antibacterials down the drain, where
they can get diluted to the point where bacteria can encounter them
and survive, and evolve resistance - well, it's all very bad juju.
For us, anyway.  The bacteria go right along partying.

  it's not going to be any fun at that party.  you should hear the stories
from the older people this year who got the flu shot and still ended up
with whatever is going around.

  songbird- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


You alarmists have nailed it. It's huge fear supported by a smattering
of facts and selective quoting of the opinions of gloom and doom
prophets. Show me some verifiable, repeatable evidence that we're
losing the microbe war and maybe I'll give your popular science and
psychology today notions some credence. Until then I'll go with the
lifesaving, health preserving methodologies that have worked to nearly
annihilate most of the infectious diseases that plagued the human race
up until the last half of the 20th century which is exactly when the
widespread use of anti-microbial agents came into its own in the
civilized countries.

Facts vs opinion. Oh, dear, which will I choose? Shall I ban DDT only
to have an extra 1,000,000 people a year die? Or will I look at the
evidence that Rachel Carson failed to provide? Just because some so-
called experts are ringing the alarm bell is no reason to panic.
Remember the predictions of the coming ice ages that were printed in
the popular science press in the 1970's. Where are those alarmists
now?

--
Brock

"Cartago Delenda Est"

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