My Husband Became a Poster Child of the Post-Antibiotic Era • Hacker News Board

Re: My Husband Became a Poster Child of the Post-Antibiotic Era

#101

Post by gumby » Sun, May 05, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #16

gumby wrote: post #15

One factor that will return once people start to panic is table manners, many of which seem fussy (separate saving utensils, a butter knife, not putting used utensils onto the table) but actually evolved for hygiene reasons. Sadly of course like any complex behavior it was also hijacked for sumptuary purposes (grape shears, egg spoons, not finishing your plate in some cultures) but I hold out a hope (probably in vail…

> many of which seem fussy (separate saving utensils, a butter knife, not putting used utensils onto the table) Fussy? Aren’t these just common sense? I wouldn’t consider them to even be “table manners”.

Looks like your comment is being downvoted due to lack of clarity in my note. My apologies!

Well yes, I agree they are sensible but it seems in the USA they are not only typically unknown but seen as pretentious.

E.g. rather than have a butter knife for transferring butter to your plate and then using a regular or smaller but regular style knife for spreading it on your bread, each person (in a typical semi-fancy US restaurant) is issued a butter knife which is used both to retrieve butter and to spread it on your (potentially bitten) bread.

And they are learned matters.

Re: My Husband Became a Poster Child of the Post-Antibiotic Era

#102

Post by DanBC » Sun, May 05, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #101

saagarjha wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many of which seem fussy (separate saving utensils, a butter knife, not putting used utensils onto the table) Fussy? Aren’t these just common sense? I wouldn’t consider them to even be “table manners”.

Looks like your comment is being downvoted due to lack of clarity in my note. My apologies! Well yes, I agree they are sensible but it seems in the USA they are not only typically unknown but seen as pretentious. E.g. rather than have a butter knife for transferring butter to your plate and then using a regular or smaller but regular style knife for spreading it on your bread, each person (in a typical semi-fancy US…

Butter knives are used to prevent crumbs transfering to the butter dish, which can go mouldy. They've got nothing to do with germs in the mouth.

Re: My Husband Became a Poster Child of the Post-Antibiotic Era

#103

Post by mrob » Sun, May 05, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #89

mrob wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is true, why doesn't it show up in paintings? Your source is written by a "color expert", not a historian, and she cites no evidence. The veins showing through pale skin theory sounds more likely to me.

Paintings were very expensive, upper class commodities. They frequently idealized their subjects. One British king had portraits delivered to him of a potential mate and was disappointed when she showed up and wasn't as attractive as her portrait. One source mocked him for it, saying he should have realized it was probably idealized, after all, it was his own portrait artist he sent, a guy who had been making him loo…

"While silver is potentially toxic to humans at high doses, the risk of serious harm from low doses, given over a short term, is slight". If something does no identifiable harm, and is a sign of high social class, wouldn't "idealizing" mean exaggerating argyria, not hiding it?

Re: My Husband Became a Poster Child of the Post-Antibiotic Era

#104

Post by DoreenMichele » Sun, May 05, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

mrob wrote: post #103

DoreenMichele wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paintings were very expensive, upper class commodities. They frequently idealized their subjects. One British king had portraits delivered to him of a potential mate and was disappointed when she showed up and wasn't as attractive as her portrait. One source mocked him for it, saying he should have realized it was probably idealized, after all, it was his own portrait artist he sent, a guy who had been making him loo…

"While silver is potentially toxic to humans at high doses, the risk of serious harm from low doses, given over a short term, is slight". If something does no identifiable harm, and is a sign of high social class, wouldn't "idealizing" mean exaggerating argyria, not hiding it?

Everyone here, including you, is dismissing the idea that it's actually harmful. Maybe the people who made those paintings didn't see it that way.

"Born with a silver spoon in their mouth" is not usually a nice thing to say. It usually means they are basically overprivileged assholes.

In chelation groups, metal poisoning is generally viewed as having a negative impact on the personality. Perhaps people who routinely dealt with "blue bloods" had enough first-hand experience to notice that visible signs of silver poisoning correlated to asshole behavior.

Anyway, I don't actually think the questions being put to me are in good faith from people sincerely curious about my knowledge or my opinions. I think the pattern of downvotes and questions suggests everyone here thinks I'm a clueless idiot and they are trying to politely let me know how stupid I am because civility is demanded by the rules of the forum.

So continuing to try to answer questions in good faith is likely making me look stubborn, pigheaded, difficult and so much of a nutjob that there is no hope of reaching me.

It's not a dance I care to engage in further.

Adieu.

Re: My Husband Became a Poster Child of the Post-Antibiotic Era

#105

Post by mrob » Sun, May 05, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #104

mrob wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"While silver is potentially toxic to humans at high doses, the risk of serious harm from low doses, given over a short term, is slight". If something does no identifiable harm, and is a sign of high social class, wouldn't "idealizing" mean exaggerating argyria, not hiding it?

Everyone here, including you, is dismissing the idea that it's actually harmful. Maybe the people who made those paintings didn't see it that way. "Born with a silver spoon in their mouth" is not usually a nice thing to say. It usually means they are basically overprivileged assholes. In chelation groups, metal poisoning is generally viewed as having a negative impact on the personality. Perhaps people who routinely…

>"Born with a silver spoon in their mouth" is not usually a nice thing to say. It usually means they are basically overprivileged assholes.

The concept of "overpriviledge" is modern.

Re: My Husband Became a Poster Child of the Post-Antibiotic Era

#106

Post by gumby » Sun, May 05, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #80

mrob wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silver is antimicrobial even at concentrations too low to be dangerous to humans. The same is true of copper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect

Yes, both silver and copper are antimicrobial. As far as I know, silver has zero nutritional value. Copper is a micronutrient useful to humans. If you want antimicrobial metal kitchenware, copper makes more sense than silver, though it should still not be overused. Additionally, copper surfaces in hospitals have a proven track record of helping to kill infection and reduce the transmission of hospital acquired infect…

BTW the conductivity of silver should make for an excellent frying pan. I saw one at Tiffanys but could not afford to find out.

Re: My Husband Became a Poster Child of the Post-Antibiotic Era

#107

Post by gumby » Sun, May 05, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

benj111 wrote: post #67

gumby wrote: post #15

One factor that will return once people start to panic is table manners, many of which seem fussy (separate saving utensils, a butter knife, not putting used utensils onto the table) but actually evolved for hygiene reasons. Sadly of course like any complex behavior it was also hijacked for sumptuary purposes (grape shears, egg spoons, not finishing your plate in some cultures) but I hold out a hope (probably in vail…

You complain about implements that could spread germs about, but also complain about grape shears that prevent everyone digging into the shared grapes with their bare hands. What actually is the risk of inter person bacterial infection like this? Is there not more risk of getting ecoli from the shared salad, than the shared salad spoon?

I mean a regular set of shears works fine. A fish knife’s shape is handy for certain flakey fish (but not all fist, e.g. tuna, swordfish). Butter knife’s slight spatula shape is handy for butter transport but mainly serves to remind you “this isn’t yours” which always makes me laugh when I M issued one in the US.

Re: My Husband Became a Poster Child of the Post-Antibiotic Era

#108

Post by hairytrog » Sun, May 05, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #85

I wish there were a nanotechnology startup that would address MRSA. In theory, you can develop nanobots that attack specific types of bacteria. Not sure if this would work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bQhGS8V6dQ

Startups are not the answer to everything... Capitalism and healthcare do not go well together because you profit from negative health.

Re: My Husband Became a Poster Child of the Post-Antibiotic Era

#109

Post by saagarjha » Sun, May 05, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #101

saagarjha wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many of which seem fussy (separate saving utensils, a butter knife, not putting used utensils onto the table) Fussy? Aren’t these just common sense? I wouldn’t consider them to even be “table manners”.

Looks like your comment is being downvoted due to lack of clarity in my note. My apologies! Well yes, I agree they are sensible but it seems in the USA they are not only typically unknown but seen as pretentious. E.g. rather than have a butter knife for transferring butter to your plate and then using a regular or smaller but regular style knife for spreading it on your bread, each person (in a typical semi-fancy US…

> Looks like your comment is being downvoted due to lack of clarity in my note. My apologies!

I have more than enough karma to take a hit once in a while. No need to apologize :)

> it seems in the USA they are not only typically unknown but seen as pretentious

I live in the US, so I'm finding it surprising that you think these are not the norm. Perhaps I'm self-selecting the people I'm around, or don't pay attention to the people who do these things…

Re: My Husband Became a Poster Child of the Post-Antibiotic Era

#110

Post by superbug_slayer » Mon, May 06, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

Fomite wrote: post #47

jen_h wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of her article wasn’t to push despair, but rather to urge the Western medical establishment to get moving on phage research. Bacteriophages as a solution to our antibiotic resistance crisis have been largely ignored in the West due to unpatentability, research mainly performed in Eastern Europe, etc — but her story is that a bacteriophage cocktail saved her husband’s life where antibiotics failed...and the…

Having seen her speak in person at IDWeek, I think an important thing to recognize is that the amount of work that went into treating her husband was pretty damned heroic - and it's not clear that that's not the standard for phage therapy. I literally have a standard "Why phage are a problem", from the perspective of an infectious disease epidemiologist whose been super-interested in phage for like...a decade. 1) The…

As the author of the op-ed you are referring to, allow me to chime in. It's true that a huge effort went into saving my husband's life with phage therapy but as a result of that, it's getting easier to treat other cases. I'll comment on your other points too:

1) Broad spectrum phages don't exist in nature but gene-editing techniques can be applied and this technology now exists. Several biotechs are now working in this space.

2) Phages are not hard to keep 'alive'. They need to be refrigerated and kept away from sunlight.

3) True that phage therapy is relatively new in the West but the field is exploding. There are very few pharmas still developing antibiotics and very few in the pipeline, esp for gram-negatives, so there is an imperative to have alternatives to antibiotics.

With an ever-expanding phage library of well characterized phages, it is possible to generate personalized phage cocktails in days. An antibiotic takes a decade to develop, at around a billion $, and has collateral damage on the microbiome. For more on the story, check out ThePerfectPredator.com