Posted on 04/05/2011 11:05:59 AM PDT by neverdem
ON DECEMBER 11th 1945, at the end of his Nobel lecture, Alexander Fleming sounded a warning. Fleming’s chance observation of the antibiotic effects of a mould called Penicillium on one of his bacterial cultures had inspired his co-laureates, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, two researchers based in Oxford, to extract the mould’s active principal and turn it into the miracle cure now known as penicillin. But Fleming could already see the future of antibiotic misuse. “There is the danger”, he said, “that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.”
Penicillin and the other antibiotics that its discovery prompted stand alongside vaccination as the greatest inventions of medical science. Yet Fleming’s warning has always haunted them. Antibiotic resistance has now become a costly and dangerous problem. Some people fear there may be worse to come: that a strain of resistant bacterium might start an epidemic for which no treatment was available. Yet despite Fleming’s warning and despite a fair understanding of the causes of resistance and how they could be dealt with, dealing with them has proved elusive. Convenience, laziness, perverse financial incentives and sheer bad luck have conspired to nullify almost every attempt to stop the emergence of resistance.
There are good reasons to hope that the extreme threat of a resistant epidemic will never come to pass—not least that 65 years of routine antibiotic use have failed to prompt one. Even so, the lesser problems of resistance continue to gnaw away at medicine, hurting people and diverting resources from more productive uses, often in the countries that can least afford it.
Convenience and laziness top the list of causes of antibiotic resistance. That is because those who misuse these drugs mostly do not pay the...
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
5000 IU’s or more of D3 a day and probiotics. I throw in an EmergenC every day too.
micro ping
Interesting situation with my son. He had NO antibiotics for over ten years. He had a very severe ear infection in college and the Amoxicillin he was prescribed did nothing for the infection.
He needed something stronger. So it’s just not a problem with individuals, it seems the microbes themselves have grown stronger.
I have to admit that I’m not as knowledgable on vitamins as I probably should be - but isn’t 5000 IU’s of Vitamin D3 a little on the high side?
Is there a point where your body doesn’t absorb vitamins when they reach that high of a level?
I forgot to add sunlight. SPF 5000 is now en vogue. Unless we are outside for more than one hour, we do not use sunblock and my 2 1/2 year old has never had a sunburn. Our bodies need the vitamin D that the sun naturally provides us. Plus it’s free! So many children are sick more often, and it’s not just because of daycare depots. Part of the problem is that their mommies slather them with chemical sunblocks for a trip to the mailbox.
With vitamin d, you need to get tested to see what your blood level is. When you get to a therapeutic dose in your bloodstream, you will no longer get sick with viruses and you will be preventing cancer and a host of other things.
I got tested in a hot summer month when I was getting sun exposure, and was already taking 2000 units of d3. My level was 25, far too low. I upped my dose to 10,000 units and after a few months, went back and my level was still too low at 45. I now take 15,000 units a day. A therapeutic dose brings your blood level up to 60. Maybe you only need 500 units.every human is different.
I see a huge difference in my energy levels and general outlook on life now that I’m on D3.
Resistance is futile.
My mother got a cut on her finger, got a little bit infected, didnt think much about it, next thing she knows is sometime later, she had severe back pain. Turned out that it was a MRSA super bug that had got into her blood stream and attacked her spine, "dissolving" two vertebrae. She had emergency surcgery and barely survived the whole ordeal.
Signs of MRSA, usually a red spot or cluster of red spots, little pustules that resemble a bug bite or spider bite. If you see something like that, get it swabbed and checked for MRSA! People loose hands, arms, legs, muscle and die from not having it ID'd promptly. Make sure you wash your hands ALL the time. If you have a loved one in a nursing home, get a nasal swab test on them, they or you can easily get it in a nursing home (or hospital) environment.
You have been warned!
Resistance to antibiotics will continue to evolve in bacteria. The “tragedy of the commons” section of the article sums it up best. The benefits of the overuse of antibiotics accrue to the user, the drawbacks are felt by others.
One of the things that always got me is how the FDA rails against colloidal silver.
Meanwhile, pool filters use silver, nano silver is put in socks to stop the smell, I have Curad bandaids that have silver in them, silver nitrate was used for years as a preventative of eye infection in newborns, and silver sulfadiazene is the treatment choice for burn victims.
But colloidal silver is snake oil...
“Resistance is futile”
Thanks for the laugh!
I use it every day. I also just added 4 drops of iodine a day and I’ve seen a big difference already.
Within a week, I was in hospital being treated for MRSA staph aereous in my blood.
It attacked my urinary tract, prostate, kidneys and liver. Was stopped as it was just starting to hit my heart.
Nearly two months later, after being released for three-days and returning via ER, I was released from hospital and am still at home on medical leave. . .with twice-daily at-home IV treatments.
Docs say when I went through the metal detector I picked up the MRSA bacteria and the heat and moisture in my shoe was a perfect environment for the bacteria to thrive as it entered through my small cut.
I had previously picked up a foot fungus at the metal detector, and this fungus cracked my skin and this opened the door for MRSA.
WARNING: Airport metal detector portals are infectious disease factories, as they are never sanitized or cleaned, and gawd knows what “lives” there, being picked up and infecting others? Why doesn't the CDC or some doctor do a medical study of those metal detector portals?
DOUBLE WARNING: What's to stop terrorists from putting MRSA bacteria in their shoes, or anthrax, going shoeless through the metal detector and thereby infecting thousands.
Good friend of mine had a serious case of BOOP just before Christmas. BOOP is a rare form of pneumonia. Difficult to diagnose. Difficult to treat. He darned near died. 37 days in hospital. Antibiotics had little effect. Prednisone finally helped bring him around.
Even Mayo Clinic got involved since the doctor that wrote the book (literally) on BOOP works there.
He gained 45 pounds, as did Jerry Lewis and other patients when on Prednisone.
Nasty stuff out there....
Answer: Nothing. However, there is always hope.
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