Dangerous staph bacteria have been found in sand and water for the first time at five public beaches along the coast of Washington, and scientists think the state is not the only one with this problem.
The germ is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – a hard-to-treat bug once rarely seen outside of hospitals but that increasingly is spreading in ordinary community settings such as schools, locker rooms and gyms.
The germ causes nasty skin infections as well as pneumonia and other life-threatening problems. It spreads mostly through human contact. Little is known about environmental sources that also may harbor the germ.
Finding it at the beach suggests one place that people may be picking it up, said Marilyn Roberts, a microbiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Fantastic! Of course far less money will be spend in research, on stopping this germ, than the US space program gets to horse around in orbit. But screw the ordinary humans. We’ve got heroes to launch into space.
One day we’ll all be wiped out by diseases we could have found a cure for. But our precious space platforms and telescopes will survive us.
#1 Glenn E.
Have you ever noticed, the more medical research we do down here on the planet, the more diseases we find that can kill us – and we can’t find a cure for them?
Wouldn’t it be funny if the only way we can save ourselves as a race is for heroes to launch into space and colonize other planets – but only after horsing around in orbit for a few decades, learning how to do space-type stuff?
Hey, you never know…
…those space platforms and telescopes? They just might come in handy, one of these days.
NASA’s contributions to mankind are enormous.
This includes medical, think body imaging, computers, etc.
Every dollar we invested in space has yielded $5.00 in benefits.
There are many things we could do to save money but cutting NASA funding is just stupid!
I think the drug war is a great place to start- rather than incarceration and liberty control how about trying to spend the money on on rehab?
Go here to learn: http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home/formankind.html
It looks like it’s time for me to take sonny boy to the beach.
I call Total BS.
I find it hard to believe that the bug would survive on hot sand in the sunlight longer than 5-10 minutes. it would get cooked & dried out and unless the sand has a food source in it, it would starve. -I imagine the UV light in the sun would be “detrimental” to its health as well.
i think the real the question is what *else* is happening at the beaches or in the water that they would try to create an air of trepidation in going to the beach..
-other than giant squid washing up on shore..?
-s
I agree with #5. “soundwash”, I think someone is dumping hospital medical waste.
#7: Bingo! Shady medical waste haulers that are dumping the stuff wherever.
I wonder where they dump in places well away from beaches…
Staph bacteria are a common bacteria found all over even on human skin “gasp.” The next thing you know researchers will find bears poop in the woods.
Staphylococcus aureus is an exceedingly common bacteria, and relatively hardy, too. Yes, it lives on everyone’s skin among many other surfaces, and most of the time you get infected, it’s an opportunistic thing (your immunity was compromised and your normal flora decided to have a party.) Usually a nice little dose of methicillin, oxacillin, etc. will clear it up for you.
But to say MRSA is only resistant to methicillin is misleading–it’s actually resistant to all beta lactam antibiotics. That is why it’s dangerous.
So this bacteria is “everywhere” just like every other strain of staphylococcus aureus, but MRSA ends up taking you out much quicker with fewer natural defenses to deal with it. It really is a superbug. And it’s not the worst one out there, but just the most prevalent one right now.
#5 — it’s unlikely that it’s just being spread by human dumping in a literal sense. More likely it’s carried, deposited, multiplies, carried again, deposited, multiplies, and so on. It can be carried by a variety of sources, too (not just human sources, not all of which will get infected either.)
Someone I know actually picked it up on an outdoor hike in Colorado of all places.
Clean water? Who needs it! Flesh eating tidal pools are way more entertaining! Move over “Jaws”! Surf’s Up!
War of the Worlds.
Ultimately, the little beasties will adapt their biology and wreak havoc.
Space survival is a continuing hoax to keep up spending levels. There is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe but it will never come here for the same reason we won’t go there–population won’t stand to be taxed at that level. On the physics/hard reality level–the distances and energy levels are logarithmically above what mere flesh and blood can achieve.
#10: i always find it interesting how fast a comment gets twisted, picked up and replicated.
#7 said: “I agree with #5. “soundwash”, I think someone is dumping hospital medical waste.”
-meanwhile, i never indicated anything about medical waste, and my giant squid comment was referring the giant Humboldt squid that washed up on a san diego [La Jolla] beach after a quake in july.
drilling down i have found numerous reports of all sorts of things appearing in the water after >4.0 quakes recently..
[please don’t take this as an attack, my whole life i have found human behaviour [cause and effect, etc] extremely interesting to say the least]
as for MRSA, i have had an intimate relationship with it. in the mid 80’s i was unlucky enough to acquire it during an ER visit, which resulted in a 11 month stay in the hospital with [enough] gentamycin in one arm and vancomycin in a central line to the point that my ears were ringing. (one of the side effects)
(which ultimately, had no effect and was a complete waste of time and money, not to mention the damage to my ears which took inside of a year to recover from)
the whole episode ended with an I.D. guy asking me to volunteer to be a test subject for Ciprofloxin. not being too fond of the Fluorine atom, i reluctantly agreed.
within 2.5 weeks of the treatment, i was free of the bug and made a small investment Miles corporation for inventing the stuff..
However, the damage the bug did was extreme. it got into my bones. I ended up with a femoral head resection on both hips and eventually [over several years] the entire lower half of my pelvis would slowly disintegrate with [it’s] bone fragments slowly migrating out via subcutaneous ulcers.
-not to mention my pubic bone eventually breaking and doing a double 90 degree rotation eventually protruding part way out of my right groin.
Even though i am a incomplete spinal cord injury guy, [relatively paralyzed] it would be an understatement in describing the pain it produces.
SO yeah, there is no doubt that it is a superbug and should be avoided at all cost..
however, when i manged to get the bug again several years ago, (at hospital visit, ofc) – [i have chronic wound from my tail bone exiting in ’91] a nurse suggested i put silver colloid on it. researching this led me to discover that silver colloid, [which i learned how to make] applied to the wound, eradicates it in about 5 days..
while happy, i was rather furious that this was not used back in the 80’s and thusly [amongst other things] sparing you from this long saga of a post..
Superbug yes, but seemingly like all things, the remedy for such nastyness was discovered a looong time ago.
-draw your own conclusions.
So i still question MRSA’s staying power in the open sun on a pile of silca which, to the best of my knowledge, is very poor nutritionally for all things born within the confines of this planet.
fwiw: the doctors at the first hospital told me that staph typically only survives for 30min to 1 hour when away from its growth medium
if you have trouble visualizing the damage the bug did to my bones, here is an X-ray from last june to show what is left of my pelvis after all this drama.
Silver or no, -at all costs, avoid letting this bug get into your bones.
-s
#13 I do see the problem.
I will try to remember the cure. Good old fashioned rubbing alcohol can kill the bug as long as it is in the open.
We are in a catch 22. The more we us antibiotics the more super bugs are going to show up and the more we sterilize the more locations we create for super bugs to move in by killing what was there and might have out competed them.
They can’t patent silver colloid. It’s been around way to long and has/had industrial uses. Exactly why we stopped using it on staph is not clear. It obviously works better on open injuries than the modern crap MRSA.
#14 – Apparently colloidal silver has been effective as a natural defense against the H1N1 virus. GIS has plenty of info.
Damn Soundwash, I’m sure glad when they put an IV in me with Vancomycin I didn’t have the side effects you did from it.
Hope you’re okay now (relatively speaking).