[srmorton]

I am so sorry to hear about your father. I teach Clinical Microbiology to Medical Laboratory Technology students and am well aware of the danger of MRSA. I recently learned that about 15% of the reported cases are now of the community acquired variety which is really scary. Once the bug becomes resistant to Vancomycin, there is really nothing they can used to treat it successfully.

There is also another Gram positive coccus, Enterococcus, that is normal in the intestine, but can cause serious infections elsewhere in the body. Many of the hospital strains of it are "VRE" - Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus. A pandemic of one of these "super-bugs" poses a MUCH greater threat to civilization than does the dubious theory of global warming.

[iwannabeme]

VRSA is scary. However, I wanted to point out that the community-acquired MRSA strains are unlike the hospital acquired MRSA in that the community strains are actually susceptible to many antimicrobials besides methicillin. This is the silver lining about community acquird MRSA but in some locations such as TAiwan, where antibitoics are available over the counter, even the community strains are resistant to mostly everything. The VRSA that have been described so far are also resistant to many things so that is scary.