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Dr. Arjun Srinivasan: We’ve Reached “The End of Antibiotics, Period”

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Re: Dr. Arjun Srinivasan: We’ve Reached “The End of Antibiotics, Period”

#121

Post by rodw »

stcredzero wrote: post #63
nostromo wrote: post #53

80% of the antibiotics we use are given to animals.[1] That seems like a good place to cut back. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/health/use-of-antibiotics-...

In Denmark, they prevent infections in chicken houses by thoroughly cleaning them, then using techniques developed for clean rooms to prevent infections. In the US, we let them wade in their own filth and pump them full of antibiotics. We should just make it flat out illegal to use antibiotics across entire herds of livestock. We should also fine doctors for prescribing antibiotics to patients with a viral infection…

The function of antibiotics in agriculture isn't to prevent infection (or at least, not primarily to prevent infection) but to fatten the animals up for slaughter.

Re: Dr. Arjun Srinivasan: We’ve Reached “The End of Antibiotics, Period”

#122

Post by just_stop »

tokenadult wrote: post #70

The interviewed expert has very good credentials and clinical experience to be talking about what he is talking about, and his warnings should be taken seriously. But even at that, the fallacious teleological language he uses about biological evolution by natural selection suggests a way out of this problem. When he says, "Bacteria, like any living organism, want to survive," and "So anything that we do to try and ki…

You took a paragraph to explain that bacteria have no desire. Thanks for that.

Re: Dr. Arjun Srinivasan: We’ve Reached “The End of Antibiotics, Period”

#123

Post by jasonkolb »

Well let's start doing something about this. I created a whitehouse.gov petition, let's start spreading it around: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-antibiotic-us...

Hopefully we'll be able to create some alternatives, but let's stop the bleeding if we can.

Re: Dr. Arjun Srinivasan: We’ve Reached “The End of Antibiotics, Period”

#124

Post by yetanotherphd »

AaronFriel wrote: post #6

For the past half century, we should have been treating our antibiotics like weapons of mass destruction - tools of last resort only to be used in emergencies, with great hesitation, and only when absolutely necessary. The industry and the doctors responded: antibiotics were too profitable and the risk seemed too distant. Now we have no weapons; we're helpless and the world is again going to be a scary place where a…

I think it would be more accurate to characterize antibiotics as effective, not just profitable. You are completely ignoring the actual benefit of antibiotics and acting like they created profits without actually benefiting the patient

Re: Dr. Arjun Srinivasan: We’ve Reached “The End of Antibiotics, Period”

#125

Post by swalkergibson »

cliveowen wrote: post #40
AaronFriel wrote: post #6

For the past half century, we should have been treating our antibiotics like weapons of mass destruction - tools of last resort only to be used in emergencies, with great hesitation, and only when absolutely necessary. The industry and the doctors responded: antibiotics were too profitable and the risk seemed too distant. Now we have no weapons; we're helpless and the world is again going to be a scary place where a…

I think it's too easy to say that overuse of antibiotics is what brought us here. In the article it says that companies stopped developing new antibiotics when development costs became too high to justify given the narrow market. Now, if doctors were to use antibiotics only for very serious infections, a last resort method, then pharmaceutical companies wouldn't have had the incentive to develop even the drugs that w…

At least we have Viagra!

Re: Dr. Arjun Srinivasan: We’ve Reached “The End of Antibiotics, Period”

#126

Post by jmsduran »

vivin wrote: post #94
tokenadult wrote: post #70

The interviewed expert has very good credentials and clinical experience to be talking about what he is talking about, and his warnings should be taken seriously. But even at that, the fallacious teleological language he uses about biological evolution by natural selection suggests a way out of this problem. When he says, "Bacteria, like any living organism, want to survive," and "So anything that we do to try and ki…

I think it's a bit pedantic to argue about his usage of "desire". Evolution is a blind watchmaker. The bacteria are reacting to selective pressures. Large populations of bacteria around the world are getting exposed to different kinds of antibiotics. It's not a matter of "if" they will acquire resistance, but "when", and we're seeing this happening right now. The fact that lines of bacteria go extinct does nothing to…

I have never heard of bacteriophages before. Doing some light research, I found their protein/body structures to look almost machine-like. Very fascinating stuff.

From Wikipedia's Bacteriophage page: "Medical trials were carried out, but a basic lack of understanding of phages made these invalid".

I seriously hope alternatives like bacteriophages are being revisited and reconsidered within the medical community, as it's obvious that conventional antibiotics are increasingly becoming less effective each year.

Re: Dr. Arjun Srinivasan: We’ve Reached “The End of Antibiotics, Period”

#127

Post by VLM »

jacobquick wrote: post #105
freehunter wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of those, though, two of the threats were real and mitigated before the impact could be realized (nuclear war and Y2K), and one of them is a fairly recent scientific theory that is still trying to be understood (climate change).

In the 80s we acted faster on freon/CFCs than we have on climate change in the ensuing 30 years, with less danger to human life and less evidence. The only thing that's new about climate change as a scientific theory is the annual increase in the pile of evidence that it's happening and we're the cause of it.

Absolutely horrible example because .com owns .gov and the primary patent for CFC production expired in 1979, obviously lots of money is going to be poured into encouraging the use of patented CFC replacements, such as making the use of CFCs illegal. I'm not questioning the science of it, I'm explaining why .com and .gov worked together really hard on banning CFCs in the early/mid 80s, because HCFCs and HFCs are more profitable. The historical about-face is documented and hilarious how .com strongly denied CFCs could have any effect therefore .gov wouldn't ban them until the patent expired, then suddenly everyone agrees we need to use the more expensive HFCs and HCFCs.

I'm quite sure around the time HFC and HCFC patents expire we'll all have to suffer thru very well industry funded explanations of how R-141b causes excessive pr0n browsing or some such nonsense, so for the children, we'll all have to switch a new, ever more expensive refrigerant.

I'm sure if the patent for CFC production expired in 2020 we'd still be pumping the classic stuff out, along with an industry funded denial movement and probably an alignment on political party lines to prevent any progress, etc.

Bringing it back on the original topic the best way to get .com (and since the merger, .gov) to fund antibiotic research in the modern real world would be to genetically engineer bacteria genome to contain an encoded .avi of the SuperBowl or an encoded Miley Cyrus .mp3 or something like that. Maybe glycophosphate resistant MRSA would get some attention from the usual suspects.

If someone could figure out how to patent global warming or global cooling we'd be on to something...

Re: Dr. Arjun Srinivasan: We’ve Reached “The End of Antibiotics, Period”

#129

Post by dragandj »

hodder wrote: post #86

The anthropomorphism of bacterial evolution makes the article hard to follow for the layman (me). Can someone familiar with bacterial evolution please explain to me how the use of antibiotics leads to superbugs? I am clearly misunderstanding something. I was under the impression that in a population of bacteria, genes express themselves in any number of random ways. If we expose the bacterial culture to antibiotics,…

Let's suppose that in an antibiotic-resistant future some, very small, number of people develop a mutation that produces 2 effects: antibiotic resistance and VERY ugly nose warts. Since other people live for 25 years and the uglies for 100 years, I suppose they would be desirable mates with lots of offspring despite the ugliness. In a few centuries, they would be the majority. Now, if there weren't the antibiotic resistance, do such mutations have the same chance to appear? Yes, but they'd have hard trouble finding mates. Their mutation has only drawbacks, and no advantages. As soon as the advantage appears, the mutation has more chance to spread through offspring. The same with bacteria. It is not necessary that they mutate more, it is just that those mutations that help the bacteria survive spread quickly. But if the danger is not present, the mutation is not significant.

Re: Dr. Arjun Srinivasan: We’ve Reached “The End of Antibiotics, Period”

#130

Post by flatline »

leephillips wrote: post #44
felxh wrote: post #22

I know the article tries to explain things in a way a layman can understand, but the wording when it comes to evolution is quite poorly chosen IMO. Saying thinks like 'Bacteria, like any living organism, want to survive' and 'bacteria will always change in order to survive', are just incorrect and will result in big misconceptions. To my knowledge, bacteria don't have an agenda, they don't want to survive and they ce…

I wouldn't be so hard on him. Teaching physics, we often find ourselves saying things like "the ball wants to roll down the hill". It seems to be natural to talk in terms of agency when trying to make concepts intelligible to the relative layman.

Yes, but the ball rolling down the hill is not very contentious, whereas evolution is (at least in the US), and wrongness explaining it makes dismissing it easier.
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