What if antibiotics didn't work anymore?

[Five-hole]

Legit? Fearmongering? Time to crack each others heads open and feast on the goo inside?

https://medium.com/p/892b57499e77

Predictions that we might sacrifice the antibiotic miracle have been around almost as long as the drugs themselves. Penicillin was first discovered in 1928 and battlefield casualties got the first non-experimental doses in 1943, quickly saving soldiers who had been close to death. But just two years later, the drug’s discoverer Sir Alexander Fleming warned that its benefit might not last.

Fleming’s prediction was correct. Penicillin-resistant staph emerged in 1940, while the drug was still being given to only a few patients. Tetracycline was introduced in 1950, and tetracycline-resistant Shigella emerged in 1959; erythromycin came on the market in 1953, and erythromycin-resistant strep appeared in 1968. As antibiotics became more affordable and their use increased, bacteria developed defenses more quickly. Methicillin arrived in 1960 and methicillin resistance in 1962; levofloxacin in 1996 and the first resistant cases the same year; linezolid in 2000 and resistance to it in 2001; daptomycin in 2003 and the first signs of resistance in 2004.

Health authorities have struggled to convince the public that this is a crisis. In September, Dr. Thomas Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued a blunt warning: “If we’re not careful, we will soon be in a post-antibiotic era. For some patients and some microbes, we are already there.” The chief medical officer of the United Kingdom, Dame Sally Davies — who calls antibiotic resistance as serious a threat as terrorism — recently published a book in which she imagines what might come next. She sketches a world where infection is so dangerous that anyone with even minor symptoms would be locked in confinement until they recover or die. It is a dark vision, meant to disturb. But it may actually underplay what the loss of antibiotics would mean.

Very interesting article. And by interesting, I mean moderately terrifying. The article goes on to explain that modern agriculture is a significant cause -- if not the biggest piece of the puzzle. Modern animal farming methods require a great deal of antibiotics to make work.

Do we need large-scale action or are tweaks on the sidelines of medical practice and agriculture sufficient?

[Street Pharmacist]

I started a thread on it about a year ago, and probably worth a read if you're interested:


http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=124943

[Street Pharmacist]

And a quick article on topic from earlier this year:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03...medical-chief/

Antimicrobial resistance poses a catastrophic threat. If we don’t act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that can’t be treated by antibiotics,” Davies told reporters as she published a report on infectious disease.

One of the best known superbugs, MRSA, is alone estimated to kill around 19,000 people every year in the United States – far more than HIV and AIDS – and a similar number in Europe.

Edit: Haha. It's the same article. Still, I left different quotes so I'll keep it up

[TurdFerguson]

"Recover or Die" sounds like the next big reality TV show to me. Move over Matt Roloff.,

[Northendzone]

you mean this burning sensation when i go to teh washroom may not go away?

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

you mean this burning sensation when i go to teh washroom may not go away?

You're fine. That's called love

[GGG]

The problem with this is the best we can do is delay the problem. Resistance is a natural outcome of evolution so even with the most limited use of anti-biotics eventually they will win.

[Thor]

Check you the recent documentary on PBS called "Hunting the nightmare bacteria."

It is an eye opener.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...mare-bacteria/

[flamesfever]

I guess the only ray of hope is that our ability, to react and find an antidote to these mutating germs, accelerates along with the mutations.

[NuclearPizzaMan]

Let's see these stupid microbes adapt to nano machines!

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011...o-antibiotics/

[GoinAllTheWay]

/\/\

From that article:

They did it last year, during a trial that saw four primates survive infection with a deadly strain of Ebola Virus after injections of Ebola-targeted siRNA nanoparticles

That's really quite impressive. Ebola has a a mortality rate of up to 90%.

[firebug]

Originally Posted by GGG

The problem with this is the best we can do is delay the problem. Resistance is a natural outcome of evolution so even with the most limited use of anti-biotics eventually they will win.

Bullcrap!

God designed these bacteria 6,000 years ago and they've been holding tight ever since.

I think we should start examining bacteria looking for what they are resistant to so that we know which antibiotic we are supposed to develop next.

[Hockeyguy15]

I blame who ever invented banana penicillin, that stuff was the best medicine ever.

[Five-hole]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

/\/\

From that article:



That's really quite impressive. Ebola has a a mortality rate of up to 90%.

Pfft, 90%? According to my research in Plague Inc., "Dick AIDS" kills 100% of humanity in nearly every trial run.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by GGG

The problem with this is the best we can do is delay the problem. Resistance is a natural outcome of evolution so even with the most limited use of anti-biotics eventually they will win.

Not really. There is plenty of evidence to show that resistance rates drop as antibiotic use decreases. Maybe not enough, but that's a promising start.

And if we continually research, we can fight them. It's certainly not an inevitability