I guess you'll have to use your ray gun...
Posted on 01/10/2006 10:03:03 AM PST by Ben Mugged
Last month brought fresh evidence that while small, bacteria can certainly look out for themselves. Clostridium difficile, a microbe that can cause serious digestive illness and death in vulnerable patients in hospitals and nursing homes but rarely bothers healthy adults outside healthcare settings, was blamed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for doing just that in four states. Like many other germs, it apparently had mutated, under pressure from antibiotics, into a toxic new strain.
~snip~ Military service members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan increasingly are coming home with Acinetobacter baumannii, a potent microbe that causes pneumonia and blood infections, in their wounds. Plucked straight from soil or water, the bug is naturally resistant, often to multiple antibiotics. Sometimes physicians have to turn to coliston, a drug rarely used since the 1960s because of the high chance of injuring the kidneys and nervous system.
Gonorrhea used to be easily treatable with penicillin, but the bacterium reponsible, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, long ago shrugged it off. Now the newer quinolone class of antibiotics such as Cipro and Floxin, which became the drugs of choice, are being defeated in the United States and in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and Hong Kong.
Resistant strains of bacteria usually confined to hospitals are finding their way into local communities. In 2003 and 2005, studies fingered Staphylococcus aureus, a microbe that is blamed for many serious heart and lung infections in hospitals and nursing homes and is resistant to the methicillin class of anti-biotics, as the cause of outbreaks of skin abscesses in high school wrestlers in Indiana, members of a Colorado fencing club, and five players on the St. Louis Rams football team.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
lesson: never take antibiotics if it can be avoided. most ailments have equally effective non-antibiotic remedies. antibiotics are a great thing, but they are WAY overused nowadays, and this is the kind of thing that will start happening...
Once again, the bacteria are not mutating. It is just that the stronger strains have always been resistant to drugs but previously were so tiny in numbers (and possibly could not as easily compete for food as well as other strains) that our immune system could deal with them. Now, the weaker strains that were vunerable to the antibiotics are all gone and the drug resistant strains are all that is left.
A really anthropomorphic way of saying evolution in action.
Speculation or fact?
I agree. While antibiotics are absolute lifesavers in some situations, their overuse is going to cause humanity some awful problems in coming years.
I also wonder if we aren't also hurting ourselves as individuals by using antibiotics for less severe infections. Does the immune system function as effectively if it never has to deal with infections all by itself?
I just see all these kids who were given antibiotics a lot in infancy and early childhood who seem to catch everything that comes along - not just bacterial infections, but viruses as well - and get sicker and stay sick longer than other kids. I wonder how often their problems with illness are genetic and how often they are caused by an underdeveloped immune system.
Does anyone know if there has been any credible research on this topic?
It's near and dear to me since I have two nieces who definitely fall into the "always sick" category. Multiple cases of strep throat, many ear infections when young, one had chickenpox twice - and I could go on and on.
This situation will of course get a lot better once the libs kill Big Pharmaceuticals.
It has been shown to be fact.
Even in a genetically similar population, mutations occur and after many generations, the genetic profile of the bacteria has changed. The resistance to antibiotics is specifically from mutations that have been selected for by our use of antibiotics.
I know personally three different people who have had MRSA pnuemonia. I myself am battling pnuemonia that keeps recurring. My husband has had it, my mother inlaw just got out of the hospital with it and now my son has it. But the doctors shrug me off laughing when I mention what a coincidence that all these people are 'catching' (which they tell me that pnuemonia isn't contagious) pnuemonia. Something is up this year.
I also wonder about that. My 2 year old daughter is constantly coming down with ear infections, viruses (sp?) etc. I'm also catching a lot of stuff nowadays. I do know that without the antibiotics, I believe she and I both would be in BIG trouble right now. It seems I catch at least 1 or 2 bugs every year that just won't go away on their own.
>>>It's near and dear to me since I have two nieces who definitely fall into the "always sick" category. Multiple cases of strep throat, many ear infections when young, one had chickenpox twice - and I could go on and on.>>>
I think it isn't as much over use of antibiotics as under ingestion of antioxidants. Snack foods, junk food, canned and over processed vegetables (when they are eaten because they certainly aren't pushed in school) are affecting our children one generation at a time.
Unfortunately I haven't seen much credible research on the subject. I imagine this is from a combination of reasons, one of which, yes, is that big companies fund a lot of research, and big pharmaceutical companies are probably not going to do backflips over funding research into avoiding taking pharmaceuticals.
That's certainly not the only reason, though. It seems likely that studies on this topic would have to be over the course of years, and hence very expensive and difficult to control.
This is frustrating to me, and probably to other people, because these arguments that taking a lot of anti-biotics is a bad thing make a lot of sense to me but I have no way to back it up. The best I can do is say that I know a few professional organic chemists and they all say to try to avoid taking anti-biotics if you can. I know that doesn't hold weight with anyone who doesn't know the same people, but it's the only real argument I can give other than that it just seems right.
It's more work to avoid anti-biotic remedies, to be sure, but I think it's usually worth it in the long run.
How about if we don't give taxpayer's dollars to pharmaceutical companies, but remove the multiple layers of red tape and circling bloodthirsty lawyers? Let capitalism work its magic in the medical world just as it does everywhere else.
IOW, the weaker strains are now stronger?
Have they evolved so that our immune systems can no longer take care of them?
>>>Some of that Billion dollars given to Africa could be used to help American Pharmecutical companies develop better drugs.>>>
BAH! If we did that, Bono wouldn't feel so good about himself! Do you really want to be responsible for the low self esteem of an aging rocker???
Can you say "they are evolving"?
E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N.
Their DNA is a combination of the DNA from multiple ancestor bacteria. The DNA has recombined, it has mutated, it has diverged and been selected for and it has evolved.
They sequence these genomes. It's on paper. It is irrefutable. It follows common sense. It is scientific. It is fact. It is evolution.
Good advice but it sort of reminds me of the old driving school advice to drive defensively vs offensively. I don't drive much anymore because most drivers drive very offensively. Like the traffic that comes to a standstill because some driver thinks they are a Nascar driver, expect the aggressive use of antibiotics to continue until they are no longer effective for anyone. In Mexico antibiotics are dispensed like antihistimines.
Muleteam1
Who was arguing otherwise?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.