The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight.
Hyperbole? Unfortunately not. The highly serious journal Lancet Infectious Diseases yesterday posed the question itself over a paper revealing the rapid spread of multi-drug-resistant bacteria. “Is this the end of antibiotics?” it asked.
Doctors and scientists have not been complacent, but the paper by Professor Tim Walsh and colleagues takes the anxiety to a new level. Last September, Walsh published details of a gene he had discovered, called NDM 1, which passes easily between types of bacteria called enterobacteriaceae such as E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae and makes them resistant to almost all of the powerful, last-line group of antibiotics called carbapenems. Yesterday’s paper revealed that NDM 1 is widespread in India and has arrived here as a result of global travel and medical tourism for, among other things, transplants, pregnancy care and cosmetic surgery.
Pretty scary. First I’ve heard about NDM 1.
Found by Gasparrini.
They have been trying to get into Bacterial fighting Bacteria. Its a long road, but they have seen a few advances.
It’s ok, we will be saved by medical nanobots that will mechanically destroy bad bacteria and cancer cells. It says so right here in my futurist brochure.
I guess we can stop worrying about global warming or running out of oil.
My initial impression… this lady’s a nutter! but what she’s saying is partially true, i think. The article is written like a fear piece, like all the swine flu bull @!$%# that passed by without an issue… No one can predict a specific time for the “end of antibiotics” especially this hack.
With that said there is a war going on in all hospitals in america (the world) against these super resistant bacteria. Some are winning. I think she’s right, partially right, going into a hospital now is more dangerous than during the golden age of antibiotics… But no bacteria is resistant to a little 70% alcohol. The “gels” she mentioned are what’s winning this war. destroying the bacteria while it’s on the doctors/nurses hands before it gets spread to the immuno-comprimised chemo patient… In Better and Atul Guwande illustrates this really well in just one chapter. It’s something like 99% of compliance (hand washing before and after entering every patient room, every time) is ridding hospitals of all traces of MRSA and Staph…
As far as having an appendix surgery now as apposed to when no antibiotics are available, it’s preferable for sure… but! The techniques and knowledge are always improving… And then there’s technology. My appendix was removed through 3 small cuts, not even really open to infection, using a little @!$%#ing camera! how cool is that! this itself reduces the chance of infection down to 1 in 1000 (or lower with skilled hands).
So… I don’t really know. It’s freaky to think about for sure. and yes it could mean that older folks that are getting pneumonia are put six feet under a few years sooner, but our immune systems are evolving right along side these nasty bugs. An apocalyptic situation is soooo unlikely; billions of bodies, trillions of bacteria (most harmless) all evolving together, always.
We’ll be ok. Sarah Boseley can go to hell.
But! one interesting thing… we should be giving our bodies the best chance at fighting these wee beasties… turns out because of all the exposure to nasty bugs these faceless masses she mentioned in India would most likely outlive our antibiotic infused asses if it ever came down to it!
I had a paper saved talking about the lack of bacterial fluara in the guts of the privileged citizens of industrialized nations and how it’s hurting our fitness… but i can’t find it.
Another unmentioned tidbit… bioengineering is just awakening as is the field of quarum sensing and countless other discoveries about the microbial world (we know so little). Who’s to say that a lab somewhere in the world doesn’t find a way to disrupt bacterial communication, or attack it with micro RNA, or…
But this doesn’t even matter… humans have lived well without antibiotics for much longer than with. So yes Sarah B. we are ready for a world without antibiotics, not that anyone can predict this. You’re article is just white noise.
Sincerely and optimistically informed,
Matt LaBella
-Well, its about friggen time.
*Tunable bio-electric resonator and blood cleaner, -check.
*Silver colloid generator, check.
*Ability to produce clean/distilled water, -check.
*Common Sense still intact, -check.
*Grounded tinfoil hat, -check.
-looks like i’m good to go. 🙂
-s
Remember this the next time you demand your doctor give you an antibiotic for the flu.
Soundwash: Makes sense you use colloidal silver. Like so much you spout here, you’re wrong. Colloidal silver preparations are known to be ineffective. That’s why the USA, UK, EU and Australia forbid their sale as anything other than a dietary supplement. As soon as they claim it kills bacteria or fungi or any virus, or has any therapeutic use, they have committed a crime. Of course taking the silver daily can lead to argyria. You take a considerable risk for absolutely no benefit.
Sounds like some bioweapon invented to cull the humans from the 3rd rock from the sun.
What did we do before antibiotics? Stuff dung into the wound?
WOW! don’t get sick!
No big deal.
It just means the we will have use more biophages.
Cursor_
Animby–I have never understood how/why docs feel any “pressure” at all to prescribe antibiotics for viral infections. Seems to my, any doc that does that just shits on his 8 years of medical training, his oath, his own professionalism, and his intellectual honesty.
The doc already gets to charge for an office visit, so I don’t get it.
Can Science save us from current predicaments? Of course.
ALL THE TIME? = No. They even made a movie of it, what-about 4-5 times now: War of the Worlds.
Silly to think the most numerous life form by species, by weight, by volume, by time on earth, by adaptivity is not going to exploit every source of food on the planet.
Silly Hoomans. The soup will prevail.
1, Take a huge number of ideal bacteria incubators (eg. chickens)
2, Put in close proximity with limited venitilation
3, Coat every flat surface in ideal growing medium (chicken shit)
4, Heat to ideal bacteria growing conditions
5, Feed with lots of antibacterial drugs – ideally ones that aren’t yet used in people.
6, Put the chickens in large vehicles with lots of ventilation and drive at high speed along highways and through cities spraying an aerosol of resistant bacteria into the countryside.
Now if only you could manage to do step 6 with a B52 over the enemies country you would have an excellent biological weapon.
Iatrogenic Nosocomial Infections. Yee Haw!!
I recall reading about an upspike in such things in neonatal nurseries so for grins I went to visit the glass wall for a look see. About the third slow pass by I saw a doc going from crib to crib doing a quick inspection of the kiddies there: ear, eyes, nose, throat. Good care right?
Didn’t wash his hands or even glove up during the entire billing cycle: about 6 kiddies.
I asked a unit nurse if their protocols included washing or gloving between kiddie visits and she said “Yes and everyone does except him: our highest admitter.”
Its amusing how many docs don’t actually believe the germ theory outweighs their own convenience. When does science ever?
So evolution works? Bugs that are resistant to the antibiotics survive? Huh. So that must mean that people who are resistant to the bugs will survive too.
“Are You Ready for a World Without Antibiotics?”
I’m ready for a world with less stupid hateful people. This seems like chlorine in the gene pol.
#13–can==do you think our microscopic competitors only attack “stupid hateful people?”
And if you do, why would that give YOU any comfort?
Heh, heh!
Well, do you want to eat beef, pork chops and fried chicken for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day or have antibiotics that could last forever if handled correctly?
This entire story is bull shit. Evolution doesn’t work, Darwin is a lie. God will save “most of us” Just ask the guy in the office next to mine. The one with the BS degree (in biology no less)hanging on his wall. Okay so a degree does not denote knowledge.
This is not really news. Doctors have been predicting this for years. Rather then prescribing a gradual dosage of medicine for our illnesses over time, we have decided to take the easy way out. This is the result. Couple this with with the antibiotics put into our food supply and it is only a matter of time before bacteria became resistant.
Still I suspect some ingenious scientist will find a novel way of treating these things at some point. And there are still natural ways to cope with certain illnesses. Mycologist Paul Stamets has discovered multiple ways of treating flues and the like using a mixture of Mushrooms. This may be the beginnings of a viral storm but in the end we will find some way to treat it.
Meh, put a bunch of resistant bacteria in with a bunch of mold for a few years, and boom, super antibiotics.
18,
you have 1/2 the problem..
1..There is another side to it..
WHEN we use 1 antibiotic ALL the time, YES it can be adapted. Changing Randomly with a few DIFFERENT Antibiotics and solutions, the Germ has little chance of adapting.
2..ANOTHER thought goes like this..
IT ISNT ADAPTION.
YOUR BODY has gained enough Antibiotics that IT HAS ADAPTED.. TO the antibiotic. AND only a STRONGER version of the BUG can infect you. The Lower strain Cant/wont. You also dont GAIN immunity FROM the lower germ for the HIGHER germ.
3.. ON the second point we can add something STRANGE about the human body. IF you supply the materials to HELP the body fight something, the BODY tends to say..OH! you are going to kill this..Go right ahead, dont mind me, I have OTHER things to do.
The body tends to NOT create the materials that we SUPPLY externally. Its trying to protect itself from OVERDOSE. You see this in people taking MEGA doses of Vit C. insted of the RDA(recommended daily allowance). you get your body USED to DUMPING the excess Vit C. IF you miss 1-2 days, your body DUMPS ALL THE VIT C..where if you take the RDA the body does NOT dump as much if you miss a day.
I wonder if not knowing how to eat correctly or how to take vitamins is also the reason why people die when piano’s are dropped on them from 100 feet up?
Is it physics or the cult of vitamins?
Is it genetics/biology or the cult of vitamins.
Silly Hoomans. The Soup will prevail.
#21
Bool..
The trick with the first one is we use the SAME antibiotics for to long. There are ONLY a few designed for certain/specific Ailments created. ALL based on the 1 format. If there 10 DIFFERENT Formats for treating something and ALL 10 worked, then rotate them around, Never the same format.
AS it is..we use the same format, for EVERYONE, for a long/short time period. The Bug has no choice but to adapt. If there are 10 different ways to ADAPT, that is hard to do. AND while its trying to figure out the patterns, we are adding and removing SOME of the formats. WE are not looking for the PERFECT FIX/solution. ONLY ALL of the ways that work. BEFORE it adapts and changes.
If we take 1 step at a time, and it ADAPTS to all or MANY format, we are creating a BOMB. A fun little thing, that MAY require us to Kill our Whole immune system to get rid of it, and as we do, we are subject to OTHER bugs. Sounds failure.
Bobbo the piano didn’t kill them, gravity did.
Buckle up and vote for Sarah…..2012…..here we come! Well whoever is left.
Animby==ok, you got me on that one. I was going for too simple minded greed, and leaped right over lazy which actually ties right back into greed.
Imagine taking “THE TIME” to educate a patient on why anti-biotics won’t work? Why you would see 2-3 fewer patients a day actually doing your job==or setting up your nurse to do it for you.
Yep. Had the best GP in town as my doc. Had to get a mandatory physical for my job. Being “incredibly healthy” as I am, this was a freebie for him but I generally have good “personal relationships” with most people I interact with. YES, its fake and insincere on my part, but it works. So I pushed it. The good doc was on his regular pattern: how much does your normal bowel movement weigh? “I don’t know, I’ve never weighed it.” Then he said “Estimate it.” So I said, about the same as four hot dogs. Seemed to satisfy him inbetween the good laughter. At the end of our 10 minute “extended evaluation” he asked me if I had any questions. “Not with your hand on the door knob.” He chuckled again in that Dr Welby manner as he left the room. My mother died from that kind of caring interaction.
So, not wanting to take the time to do your job with high school drop outs and other welfare trash is quite understandable. And if it leads to “a world without antibiotics” well:
I’ve got mine, screw you.
Say ECA==reading your post, and rereading mine, seems we are making the same “over generality:” assuming too much intentionality?
Its telling that great love/hostility can be generated by generalities that actually don’t exist if you take the time to drill down to more specific examples.
Not done as often as it should be.
We are but Stupid Hoomans.
When you can present peer-reviewed papers showing that humans in general gather resistance to continued use of an antibiotic, then there’s something to debate, CAPITAL guy.
Until then, there is nothing to debate as you are just making unsupported assumptions with anecdotal and non-causal evidence. Just like the sad anti-vaccination people do.
If you were stating more along the lines that antibiotics seem to change our intestinal and other flora and thus cause issues later on, I’d be more inclined to listen, but that also hasn’t been shown to be true for standard humans.
To a large degree, it appears antibiotics have been misused by doctors and patients causing larger pools of mutations to be available for resistance.
It’s far easier for antibiotics to work on a population when only 5-10% of them are actively using them. When it gets upwards of 20-30% there is a larger and larger likelihood that resistance on the bacterial side will develop, which is what we’ve been seeing. That’s ignoring any coming from foodstuffs and water runoff from farms.
There is also the problem that people have been trained to go get antibiotics at the slightest sniffle, instead of letting things run their course for a while. I think this is something that doctors are primarily at fault about — they obviously want to catch major issues early, but they historically don’t differentiate between major and minor infections. This came from the beginnings of physiology where it was very likely you’d die from simple infections only because we didn’t know how to treat them adequately.
I like the old adage that “less is more.” It also helps when people actually rest instead of grinding themselves into the ground while sick.
jIM,
There are a few things I said..
1. MORE then 1 drug to deal with the problems..ALTERNATIVE ways..not every doctor treating Everything with the same antibiotics.
This goes with your thought of to many doctors scribing Antibiotics.
2. If you were stating more along the lines that antibiotics seem to change our intestinal and other flora and thus cause issues later on.
I can go farther. That our system creates the chemicals it deems to use to fight something. WE intervene and ADD to the fighting power. IN SO DOING, the body EITHER learns that WE can handle it, and STOPS fighting OR the body has released it LIMITED supplies to deal with the problem and it CANT help, OR we burn out the chemicals by having the body produce them and it cant produce any more, or we Saturate the body so hard and heavy, we WIPE out most of the defenders and their ability to ASSIST.
Have you heard of 5HTP? (Hydro tryptophan) its a wonderful herbal. GREAT for those with long term pain. Any pain that takes awhile to go away the body has been releaseing its own chemicals to protect you. After a time, they CAN run low in your system. This helps your body REPLACE those needed chemicals.
I pointed out to a person. He was spraying his yard with insecticide. That when he killed ALL his known PESTS, he creates a EMPTY area. And that AREA seems mighty nice to other bugs..from OTHER yards.
I cant say for you or anyone. But to many submit without trying, either the doctor or the patient. Docs cant suggest a Supplement that could help. Patients expect the DOC to help.
I will give you a little personal history, since you have some background…
I have nail patella syndrome.
Born with both legs behind me.
12 years of surgery.
AS a child, you DONT know what normal IS. You live your days, and if not TO MUCH of a difficulty, you never get UNDERSTOOD/diagnosed. Iv been a LONG term pain person. Let me suggest that SOMEONE learn to read the mind and body. AS I know the doctors cant. asking a child if they in pain, when their WHOLE body is fighting to COVER pain, is like asking a DOG to bark. the kid isnt felling much of anything.
I dont need to tell the rest, lets just say its WEIRDER. If you wish to take the time, look something up. its called companion plants. its something nature does.
ECA==I think you are thinking there is ONE solution for a whole continuum of different issues.
I agree “some” human conditions would be helped/cured/avoided by a stronger immune system, but other conditions not. Some conditions do better with positive mental attitude, other not. Some people need a little, others a lot, others none.
WE AREN’T ALL THE SAME. Our body chemistries offer a range to outright different depending on the issue and depending on how the issue/solution is defined.
But still, you are being too general. Get specific. Should every cold be treated with Vit C? Linus thought so along with practically everything else==yet some people are allergic to any extra Vit C in their system==and so forth.
It would be nice if we were biologically all the same, but we are not so well designed. Exactly why some of us “should” survive the coming lack of antibiotics.
Pro’s and Con’s to every issue/solution.
Aint Life Grand?
Bo,
thats the problem..
There are NOT enough different formats of Antibiotics for Each use. Many focus on 1 area to heal, and there is only 1 drug created at a time. On general antibiotics there are a few but NEW forms wont be created until about the time these stop working. AND then cost TONS of money.
depending on the drug, there HAS to be a few other ways to defeat some of these problems Without resorting to killing off the whole system, then trying to rebuild it.
people are susceptible to many problems when they quit antibiotics. I believe its better to Assist the body create what is needed. And part of that problem is our food practices.
Our diets shouldnt need TONS of supplements to get the extra protections we need.
Bo, go look up Amino acids and what they do. Then try to figure out where they are in our diets.
Well, ECA, I have to admit I’ve never actually treated NPS – it’s pretty rare. I hope for your sake that you haven’t let your herbal and nature inclinations overrule the medical profession. NPS has a nasty association with kidney problems and glaucoma and some other unpleasantries. Since you’re ill, I won;t oick on you rightnow. I will say this, though: there is no such thing as “natural” aspirin. It is a completely synthetic drug first synthesized in the mid 1800s. Yes, I know you can boil up lots of white willow bark and get some of the same chemicals (salicin and linoleic acid) but that’s not aspirin. I know it works okay to relieve fevers and some minor pains and if that works for you, outstanding. Not everyone, though, has access to a willow tree.
#27 Bobbo – Yes and no. You’re right. It comes down to greed in a fashion. But I wasn’t suggesting that doctors are too lazy to educate the patients. If a patient comes to you with a problem, they get really pissed off if you don’t do something for them. If you have a nasty cold and go to the doc and pay your money, you don’t want to hear, wait a few days and you’ll feel better. There’s an old saying: Got a cold? Just wait and it’ll go away on it’s own in a week or a week and a half. But with some miracle medicines and the best medical treatment we can get rid of it in only 7 to 10 days!
I’m in a luxury position where I can send someone away with just advice. I don’t charge my patients. But a doc in private practice has a nut to meet (rent, staff, etc) and he’s not going to meet it if he sends too many patients away angry.
ECA
You seem to be talking in circles. And your screaming CAPS lease me baffled. Maybe you have a point, I can’t tell any more. Do you have any specific evidence to support your argument?