Posted on 10/13/2017 6:08:04 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Antibiotic resistance will end modern medicine and push us into a "post-antibiotic apocalypse", England's chief medical officer has warned.
Dame Sally Davies has issued a call to action urging global leaders to address the growing threat of resistance to antibiotics.
Professor Davies warns antibiotic resistance can jeopardise everyday medical procedures and make them "risky" - including caesarean sections, cancer treatments and hip replacements.
She also says without drugs to treat infections, transplant medicine would be a "thing of the past".
Professor Davies told Sky News: "The post-antibiotic apocalypse is that when you get an infection, we cannot guarantee it will be curable, treatable, so, conditions like routine operations will be a serious risk to life.
"Transplants and cancer treatments will be very risky. We already have deaths across the world because of drug-resistant infections, we cannot put up with this.
"I don't want to say to my children that I didn't do my best to protect them and their children."
The World Health Organisation says antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security and development today.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sky.com ...
Getting the government completely out of the medical and insurance fields would return medicine to rationality and come as close as possible to universalizing access because the costs would be drastically lower. Insurance would become insurance again, which it has not really been since FDR. It would be cheap and mostly only cover large expenses like heart and brain surgery. Everything else would fit into normal household expenses. There would be, however, no electoral and financial benefits for politicians so I am sure it cannot possibly be done.
I think that for some applications Colloidal Silver is awesome.
Cuts on my dog, for instance, and cuts on the inside of the mouth.
Other problems include:
* They think Western medicine is very potent so take half a dose.
* Feel better and stop taking it when you feel better, not to the end of the course when all the bacteria are killed. This is an issue in the developed as well as developing world.
* Take it until you cannot afford to get more, so an incomplete course encourages development of antibiotic resistant strains.
* HIV patients acting as hosts who continually need antibiotics and antivirals, often spreading the antibiotic resistant stains (especially TB)
Limit repeat use of pesticides and herbicides in an area.
You need to vary the chemistry. Things that get used to chemical A will be knocked down by B. This needs to be over a region, not just on a field by field basis.
More crop variety. We gave a lot of incentives to corn and soybean growers, which led to more corn and soy being planted and less wheat, oats, onions, whatever. Now if a farmer in say, Dodge county Nebraska wanted to plant something different, there is no local options to process that crop. Dual culture growing means the weeds only have to fight two (or maybe one) type of plant. This would also be better for prices.
Corn prices are not that much more than when I was a kid. Instead of trying to make farms grow more corn by subsidies, let the market decide. This will lead to a change in the food industry, but we are so maize (corn) heavy that would be a great thing.
Less tax breaks for major corporate land holders on equipment and land taxes. A large landholder makes more money on subsidies and tax breaks than on farming in many years (which is why I became an engineer and my cousin still farms). So we indirectly pay more for food via tax policy than the market.
That is for starters.
There is a danger in using bio to fight bio.
Life finds a way. The “nice” phage today might be found to kill some “nice” bugs, and you end up worse.
Medical science is on the verge of a sea change initiated by the already ongoing research into the gut biome and the part microbiota play in human health whether good or bad.
Let me put it this way.
I am an engineer. Most of medicine is an art, not a science.
I have seen such claims literally all my life. I am north of 40, and have seen few pan out.
The older I get, the more I remember what my grandpa told me with the last sea change was in full swing.
There is a reason we did things the old way.
DNA analysis is allowing the identification of bacteria that was impossible or very difficult in the gram negative/positive days. We’re seeing studies that are showing correlations between the gut biome and autoimmune diseases. As you said medical science is an art. It’s not a straight forward application of physics like engineering. We’re beginning to understand the universe that each of us comprises including about a trillion human cells and a hundred trillion microbiota.
We have made great advances, but again, I deal with numbers and reality.
I am very skeptical of the great claims of being just around the corner. I know to many people working in that field, and they are not as (shall we say) hopeful as the press is.
Gut biology is a big deal. But that isn’t new. That has been known in animal husbandry for a long time. My father fed what would today be called probiotics to out cattle when feeding corn or after a round of antibiotics for a sick calf (the only time we DID use antibiotics in those days).
Large farms abandoned that practice because if you are raising 40,000 head, it is all about pounds per day of gain, and not health of the animal. The goal was to get the animal to the packer the week before it dies of a liver abscess. The older methods take to long, and cost to much.
It is the same way with the topic of the article. A lot of health has to do with activity, diet, and lifestyle. My old doctor would look at my Xrays, and say “Red, you shouldn’t have broke all those bones as a young idiot. You are going to have pain now the rest of your life”.
My new doc keeps trying to push pain pills when I come in. I don’t want pills, I want to know why knee sounds like Rice Krispis when I walk all of a sudden. The pain is just background noise.
When I gashed my leg I wrapped it up with a couple of silver dimes under the bandage. My mother-in-law told me about that.
Going to Single Payer will likely abort that sea change if it is not ready to roll out and cheap enough that high prices are required through a patent period. Those high prices will not be paid by the government in a SS system and fantastic advances will be put back in the drawer. Get the government totally out of medicine and we will have some very rapid and paradigm changing new developments in practice.
Don’t forget the hair weaves. Fake fingernails?
When was that? I've been around a long time and don't remember that event................
Calcium build up due to increasing arthritis........You know that..........
If all you're concerned about is the noise, why do you go to your doctor in the first place? That don't make sense............
Look up fecal matter transplants. It’s definitively possible to DIY and big pharma can’t touch it.
I’m married. She pretty much demanded I get it checked out. Think I wake her up in the morning.
Grandpa did that with horses!
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Good for Granpa. Settlers west of the Appalachians would put silver dollars in their water barrels. Kept the water good. Silver is a good antibiotic.
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