Tuberculosis appeared on Earth three million years ago

Pravda.ru ^ | 08/22/05 | staff

[Billthedrill]

You are correct. It's difficult to treat due to the lipid coating around the organism which tends to slow or prevent absorption of antibiotics. Same genus as the causative organism for leprosy, BTW, Mycobacterium leprae.

In a college path lab I once had a fellow student drop a petri dish of M. tuberculosis on the floor during a class. We did the whole place in formalin and they made us autoclave our shoes. Ever seen a pair of autoclaved sneakers? Not a pretty sight...

[PLK]

Tuberculosis appeared on Earth three million years ago

Maybe. But its appearance in the U.S. has increased dramaticallly with the influx of immigrants from 3rd world countries across our porous borders. Also, the prevalence is dramatically increased in areas with very high incidence of AIDS because they have no immune system to fight it off.

No big deal, though. We are just one big global family .... right??? Mention either of these issues and you will be drummed out of town for being racist and homophobic. There IS NO PUBLIC HEALTH issue here - everyone can just move on.

[wallcrawlr]

Previous research of the virus's DNA showed that the disease had appeared 35 thousand years ago. However, French scientists studied a special type of bacterium that causes tuberculosis in Eastern Africa. Specialists draw the conclusion that the "southern" virus can be much older, with other types of bacterium originating from it.
Scientists presume that the TB virus, which originated three million years ago in Eastern Africa, spread on the planet through people's migrations.

Interesting ping

Revelation 4:11
See my profile for info

[Texas Songwriter]

Not to worry too much. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is essentially cosmopolitan. It is and will become more common as a pathogen in this country as it was once nearly extinguished as a disease in this country in all except alcoholic, but is making a comeback as illigal aliens stream across the border. We are starting to see some close kin to Mycobacterium tuberculosis with the leprosy organism now being found in this country as a clinical disease.

I used to work as a lab assistant when I was in undergraduate school and we cultured Mycobacterium avium, but never the tuberculosis organism.

I have found may people on routine Chest X-ray with calcified granulomas in the apex of the lung indicating a once active case now quiescent and calcified. Most of these patients are seropositive for TB.

[Billthedrill]

Yep, only these days some of it's antibiotic-resistant. Lovely.

[Sola Veritas]

The writer of this article wasn't particularly bright. In several places TB is called a virus. In the end it is called a bacteria.

Actually, it is indeed a bacterium as some have pointed out. A different variety than most in the composition of its cell wall(called "acid-fast" vs merely "gram positive"). It is also, stated by someone, of the same Genus as the leprosy bacterium. It is significant in that leprosy is mentioned a great deal in both the old and new testaments of the Bible.

[Coyoteman]

Tuberculosis appeared on Earth three million years ago.

I thought it was four million years ago, no?

Is that before or after 4004 B.C.?

[metmom]

Oh, that's bad.

[Doctor Stochastic]

...they made us autoclave our shoes...

After removing them, I presume.

[fire_eye]

Howscum Pravda is failing to mention that TB is epidemic in "The Former Soviet Union" (yawn) now, because Russia's third-world-quality medical care has produced strains of antibiotic resistant TB as a result of people taking partial courses of antibiotics? (Source: National Geographic, a couple of years back).

I was just sure they'd point that out...

[Enchante]

"TB is spread through the air from one person to another. The bacteria are put into the air when a person with active TB disease of the lungs or throat coughs or sneezes. People nearby may breathe in these bacteria and become infected."

Here's a random but interesting story (I think) about a close encounter with TB and a near-miss blunder of medical practice: I had a very scary encounter with TB three years ago..... I was being treated for a serious bout of cancer in a major NYC hospital.... mostly as an out-patient, but they would destroy my immune system via chemotherapy, and a couple of times I had to be rushed to the ER with a serious fever ("neutropenic fever" they called it), and then admitted as an in-patient so they could put me in isolation and pump me full of major anti-biotics for a week or two.... anyway, one time at 5 am I'm brought from the ER upstairs to a hospital room, and it's not an isolation room (even though I have absolutely no immune system left). The other guy in the room is awake, hacking and coughing and gaggging worse than anything I've ever heard.... after a couple of hours of this I'm ready to scream at someone to get out, figuring that there must be something infectious in the air from all that coughing, when a Doctor comes by, looks at my chart, and rushes out of the room.... I hear all kinds of whispered commotion right out in the hallway, I can tell there's quite a fuss, and then the nurses and orderlies rush in and wheel me right out of there, without anyone saying a word.... now they give me about the most prime room in the hospital, a huge corner room with great window views of the East River and the city and it's a single, only one bed, so now I'm finally in isolation and in probably the best room in the hospital to boot. A little later I'm talking with one of the hospital staff one-on-one, and I ask what the h--- that was all about, why was I put in that other room with an obviously very sick patient when I was supposed to be in isolation due to having no immune system, and how did I now rate the fabulous room that looked like it must be for wealthy private patients paying some huge premium on the usual rates... anyway, I cajoled the real story out of her, swearing never to tell (this is anonymous, so it's OK), and she said that I had just been part of the worst medical blunder she'd ever seen, that the other patient was a late-stage HIV patient dying of AIDS, tuberculosis, and a couple of other things, and that it was the last room in the entire hospital that someone in my condition should have been put into, even temporarily. A doctor/resident making the first round freaked out when she realized what the night staff had done, probably some half-asleep nurse who admitted me without thinking about the charts.... Anyway, I may have breathed lots of TB spores or bacterium, but by this time they had me on IV major major major antibiotics, 3 different ones that I'd never even heard of (the kinds that are supposed to kill just about anything), so I survived (but I assume the other guy didn't).

[fire_eye]

Not just TB... a host of third-world-dirtbag diseases previously unknown in this country are on the rise due to... you guessed it! Third-world-dirtbag immigrants!!

Chagas disease... Dengue fever... etc... Most doctors, being liberals, won't admit it either, that would be politically incorrect of course. Better to treat it as a "Health Problem" - at least as long as it's not YOUR 14-year-old daughter dying of Bessarabian monkey-pox or whatever it is this week. (That usually wakes a liberal up... too late to save the rest of us from the depradations to which they subject us in their pathological state of denial of reality, of course...)

[LiteKeeper]

YEC INTREP

[fatima]

Thanks Perdogg,It must be Bush's fault.

[VadeRetro]

"Mass consumption?" Pravda.ru has sense of humor? Say is not so, tovarschi!

[trisham]

Thanks for the ping!

[Larry Lucido]

TB or not TB that is the question. Consumption be done about it? Of cough.

Stop making unwarranted consumptions. When you consume, you make a "con" out of "u" and "me."

[Larry Lucido]

That should be, you make "cons" out of "u" and "me."

[Elsie]

Nope........

Bad meat in the can gets you AIDS.