A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus • Hacker News Board

Re: A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus

#91

Post by piyush_soni » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:44 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #86

kuzehanka wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Grow some of your own food so you can control what goes on it. This is laughable. Growing your own food is a cute hobby, but if it was actually adopted at scale, the resource, energy and land costs associated with food production would go up by somewhere between 10-100x. The current population of this planet could not and can not exist without modern agriculture.

Not everyone sees it that way. https://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/who-knew-vegetable-ga... https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home_garden/victory...

You realize that most people in the world don't have a garden of their own. Right?

Re: A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus

#92

Post by DoreenMichele » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:47 AM UTC

kuzehanka wrote: post #88

DoreenMichele wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone sees it that way. https://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/who-knew-vegetable-ga... https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home_garden/victory...

I don't think you have any grasp of the efficiency gains brought by modern agriculture and its scale. I actually grew up on an old school farm and it took the land area equivalent of an apartment complex to feed our one family all year round. Tending to it was almost a full time job for 6 of the 12 months of each year. This is how people have been living for hundreds of years, the math is pretty well understood. If y…

What part of "Grow some of your own food" are you interpreting to mean "grow all of your own food"?

I'm well aware that the efficiencies of modern agriculture has allowed us to have more than half the global population living in cities for the first time in human history. This not only become true within my own lifetime, it became true within the lifetimes of my children.

None of which is really pertinent to the idea that there is value in having some food supplies outside the chain of industrial agriculture as a protective measure.

Last I heard, American gardens provided about 10 percent of America food. I didn't bother to mention that earlier because I couldn't find a source.

Ten percent of a nation's food is not insubstantial, even if is less efficient than industrial agriculture.

Re: A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus

#93

Post by DoreenMichele » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:50 AM UTC

piyush_soni wrote: post #91

DoreenMichele wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone sees it that way. https://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/who-knew-vegetable-ga... https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home_garden/victory...

You realize that most people in the world don't have a garden of their own. Right?

Yes.

I assume you know some city people grow herbs and veggies in their kitchen window or in a container on the patio.

It also wasn't a suggestion that everyone on the planet must do this.

Re: A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus

#94

Post by kuzehanka » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:55 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #92

kuzehanka wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you have any grasp of the efficiency gains brought by modern agriculture and its scale. I actually grew up on an old school farm and it took the land area equivalent of an apartment complex to feed our one family all year round. Tending to it was almost a full time job for 6 of the 12 months of each year. This is how people have been living for hundreds of years, the math is pretty well understood. If y…

What part of "Grow some of your own food" are you interpreting to mean "grow all of your own food"? I'm well aware that the efficiencies of modern agriculture has allowed us to have more than half the global population living in cities for the first time in human history. This not only become true within my own lifetime, it became true within the lifetimes of my children. None of which is really pertinent to the idea…

I really doubt american home gardens are providing 10% of america's food.

But I think a large home garden like mine could ostensibly provide 10% of my family's fruit/veg intake. It takes a nontrivial mount of work to maintain, it takes a lot of water and energy, and it takes ownership of a large piece of land, and I could have also subdivided the land and built a second house instead of that garden. Oh did I mention one fuckup with extreme weather pests or birds means you lose everything? Guess who was enjoying my first ever harvest of peaches? It wasn't me, it was the fucking cockatoos that raided it in less than an hour.

All of those opportunity costs to reduce my intake of harmful chemicals by 10%? That's laughable. No one is doing home gardening unless they enjoy it. The health benefits are a minor bonus that comes way down the list after real benefits like proper flavour.

Re: A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus

#95

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:57 AM UTC

mimac wrote: post #82

plutonorm wrote: post #81

I currently have a ringworm infection on my leg, which hasn't responded to 3 different topical antifungals. Wondering if I am going to die...

I cured mine with 10vol.% lavender oil + 10vol.% thyme oil in carrier oil (grapeseed oil). I couldn't be bothered by going to a doctor and it worked fine. Essential oils are non-selectively toxic so do be careful.

>I couldn't be bothered by going to a doctor

Do you live in the USA?

I can't believe "going to the doctor" can still be a problem, unless you're in war zone or one of the worlds' poorest countries but that doesn't apply to the US, does it?

Re: A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus

#96

Post by DoreenMichele » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:57 AM UTC

kuzehanka wrote: post #94

DoreenMichele wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of "Grow some of your own food" are you interpreting to mean "grow all of your own food"? I'm well aware that the efficiencies of modern agriculture has allowed us to have more than half the global population living in cities for the first time in human history. This not only become true within my own lifetime, it became true within the lifetimes of my children. None of which is really pertinent to the idea…

I really doubt american home gardens are providing 10% of america's food. But I think a large home garden like mine could ostensibly provide 10% of my family's fruit/veg intake. It takes a nontrivial mount of work to maintain, it takes a lot of water and energy, and it takes ownership of a large piece of land, and I could have also subdivided the land and built a second house instead of that garden. Oh did I mention…

No one is doing home gardening unless they enjoy it. The health benefits are a minor bonus that comes way down the list after real benefits like proper flavour.

I've spent time on an email list where the owner was growing food for their ill spouse in order to have control over everything that went into that food.

Not everyone does things for the same reasons you do them.

Re: A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus

#97

Post by richardhod » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 11:09 AM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #78

nickysielicki wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and I'm generally on board with limiting my own use of antibiotics (e.g. not asking a physician for an antibiotic prescription for a minor illness that is most likely viral). I, on the other hand, have an illegal supply of powerful antibiotics and antifungals sitting in my medicine cabinet. They're technically for fish, but do the math: there are only a handful of factories making these pills in the world, and the…

You can go to a doctor, and you can both agree that you have a certain infection, and the doctor will refuse to prescribe a drug which all parties know will cure the infection That’s really not a thing that’s happening. You might find a doctor reticent to throw antibiotics at minor infections, but that’s because of their side effects rather than anything to do with antibiotic resistance. In any case, even if there ar…

indeed, it's mostly that they know which antibiotics and other drugs work on which infections, and when they will not work at all. So many people demand drugs for colds and flu, and it is only the incompetent doctor that will give you antibiotics for viruses. Patients generally aren't good at diagnosis or choosing correct treatment, even with their apparent certainties from google.

Re: A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus

#98

Post by dekhn » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 12:12 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #63

dekhn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very unlikely that western doctors in a major hospital would use a traditional jungle remedy that has limited clinical support. I did a quick skim and the clinical support isn't very good. (none of this is to say it's not effective, just that it's unlikely western doctors would do this based on current clinical evidence)

The tautological limitations of our medical system frustrate me. Things aren't attempted because they lack clinical evidence, and they lack clinical evidence because they are not attempted. I know that sounds like I don't understand that this is simply how medical science works; in fact, I do. It's the cost of improving our certainty as new therapies are adopted. But, it's frustrating.

It's more complicated than that, but yes, the current state of medical research on humans is really far worse than it could be.

Note than many of the barriers are political. For example, we want to use clinical date from the EU, but the GDPR law makes working with the data extremely challenging. Previously, I worked with GA4GH which is trying to get consent forms changed to allow more aggregation of clinical data to be re-used outside of the original trial (metastudies on millions of patients) but it hasn't really gained a lot of adoption.

Other barriers are financial- there are a lot of incumbents who make a lot of money without making the system significantly better (I think of the major EHR companies here, especially Epic, but many drug makers and medical device makers fall in this category too).

Even within the reasonable constraints on ethics, the field could do tremendously better but there is no political will to make it so.

Re: A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus

#99

Post by jnurmine » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 12:41 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #76

mherdeg wrote: post #69

Johanna Rhodes, an infectious disease specialist at Imperial College London, told the New York Times: "We are driving [the spread of antifungal-resistant organisms] with the use of fungicides on crops." The Times also cited a theory from Tom Chiller, head of the CDC's fungal branch, that C. auris has become increasingly prevalent as the widespread use of azole fungicides has killed off other fungi on crops. So ... le…

> and I'm generally on board with limiting my own use of antibiotics (e.g. not asking a physician for an antibiotic prescription for a minor illness that is most likely viral). I, on the other hand, have an illegal supply of powerful antibiotics and antifungals sitting in my medicine cabinet. They're technically for fish, but do the math: there are only a handful of factories making these pills in the world, and the…

I wonder when they start adding to fish pills additional substances which are OK for fish but harmful to humans.

Re: A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus

#100

Post by shawnz » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #31

fzeroracer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to be remarkably disengenous and take my argument out of context, sure. But I will not stand for people recommending alternative medicine for absolutely everything. I already had to deal with a family member doing just that, forcing random concoctions of nonsense onto a family member suffering from cancer and attempting to divert them from actual treatment. Especially when they act like they're better tha…

But I will not stand for people recommending alternative medicine for absolutely everything I totally agree. The anti-vaxxers, for instance, are incredibly dangerous not just to the health of individuals, but to modern civilization. My point is that just because something is a folk remedy, or predates the invention of the scientific method, doesn't mean it's inherently without value. Rigorous scientific studies can a…

> But there is a certain dismissiveness amongst many folks like us of anything not invented by the pharmaceutical industry

I don't think that's true. The cures don't need to be invented by the pharmaceutical industry to be taken seriously. But they do need to be studied and commercialized by the pharmaceutical industry to be taken seriously.

How could you take seriously a pharmaceutical product which is rejected by its own industry? Obviously it's not commercializable in an honest way if that's the case, or someone would have done it by now.