Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Age of the Superbug Is Here

huffingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 164 posts

Re: The Age of the Superbug Is Here

#41

Post by foldr »

J-dawg wrote: post #35
DanBC wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that one source of infection is dirty storage pots. That's what NHS Choices says, and they tend to be evidence based (although we can argue about the evidence they use). http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Eyehealth/Pages/Contactlenssafety...

That seems plausible. But I was once told that ideally you shouldn't even take a shower in contacts (Not that I always followed that advice). Maybe I just had an over-cautious optometrist.

It's definitely the standard advice, I just wonder how much evidence there is to support it. I guess it does make sense that the lens might make it easier for the bacteria to breed.

Re: The Age of the Superbug Is Here

#43

Post by middlef »

cmdrfred wrote: post #42
middlef wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth hurts eh?

Hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.

Pal don't go around cursing HN crowd. They _will_ downvote you out of existence.

Re: The Age of the Superbug Is Here

#44

Post by the-dude »

arethuza wrote: post #4

We got a scare a couple of years back when our teenage son got an eye infection - the doctors and eye hospital went through five different antibiotics before finally finding something that fixed it, which was quite stressful. NB When you are warned not to wear contact lenses in swimming pools - take it seriously! We're almost certain that's how he got the problem.

Were these soft or hard lenses?

The one time I had to switch to softs, I had an infection in 2 weeks. My lens hygiene procedures are not compatible with softs apparently.

Re: The Age of the Superbug Is Here

#45

Post by TempleOS »

Satan's Jedi mind tricks can't touch me.

God says... rebates humanitarians Dixieland crybabies newer washstand reprove gruel alacrity's exigent Chan's Catt Virgo's exclaim crush's rules noodling European's corned Tamil's holiness experiment agonize tzar pointing Aleut voids threesomes staffer's sugaring floods plunge's

Re: The Age of the Superbug Is Here

#46

Post by maxerickson »

DanBC wrote: post #9
lossolo wrote: post #6

This is an amazing video[1] from Harvard Medical School released couple of days ago showing evolution of bacteria that evolve in 10 days to become resistant to antibiotics. [1] https://youtu.be/plVk4NVIUh8

It is amazing. They've been doing that experiment for a while now, so I hope the video makes people realise how serious it is. Here's a clip with a bit more information from the BBC Horizon popular science programme. http://v6.tinypic.com/player.swf?file=24goih4&s=6 (Sorry for the sub-optimal hosting, but YouTube's contentID blocks this clip.) One of the things they don't mention in that video is what the safe human…

You can also have severe side effects that aren't lethal. Organ damage, hearing loss, stuff like that.

Re: The Age of the Superbug Is Here

#47

Post by zdkl »

arethuza wrote: post #8
zdkl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think paying more for your food will make bacteria stop reacting to selective pressure? Or do you think we can stop relying on 'organic' food?(in the biochemical sense, not the hippie meaning) Either way I've got some bad news for you

If the choice is cheap meat or antibiotics (and yes I know it's not quite that simple) then I'll take antibiotics.

The cheap option is antibiotics, that's why we have this problem in hte first place! If you want the best of both worlds (limiting bacteria proliferation AND antibiotic use) the current methods for providing food at scale are impractical for many cost-related reasons.

Re: The Age of the Superbug Is Here

#48

Post by zdkl »

nebula wrote: post #10
zdkl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think paying more for your food will make bacteria stop reacting to selective pressure? Or do you think we can stop relying on 'organic' food?(in the biochemical sense, not the hippie meaning) Either way I've got some bad news for you

I can understand what he meant: Heavy use of antibiotics in diary and poultry industry is a significant factor contributing to drug resistant bacteria. In other words, these industries are actively providing the selection pressure you referring here.

Well the selection environment is a requirement to not getting sick from eating the products. You can't just have a nice chat with the microbe unions and ask them to behave and stay off the meat...

Re: The Age of the Superbug Is Here

#49

Post by DonaldFisk »

The article mentions phage therapy in passing, and links to this Nature article: http://www.nature.com/news/phage-therapy-gets-revitalized-1....

The Nature article hints that the main barrier to adoption is that it's difficult to for pharmaceutical companies to make a profit out of phage therapy: the cure is entirely natural, bacteriophage are the most common organisms on the planet, they reproduce very quickly, and evolve to overcome bacterial resistance.

Re: The Age of the Superbug Is Here

#50

Post by glormph »

nkozyra wrote: post #33
triplesec wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swimming pools are far from sterile. The chlorine and other additives serve to inhibit the growth of organisms, but with so many contaminating bodies in it, they are far from sterile. Some public pools, not assiduously managed, at the end of the day, take on more than the aroma of chlorine; but even those that don't are not free of bacteria and other interesting life.

Well I specifically didn't say "sterile" but rather "fairly sterile" compared to other water sources. Edit: As a note to the pedants, of course sterile" is a binary, I used that casually to mean "less microbrial than a lot of the places where our eyes go." ;) <- right eye unfortunately hit the unsterile waters of a chlorinated pool.

As a former boss used to say, there is no "fairly sterile" just as there is no "fairly pregnant".
Post reply on HN