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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”

#231

Post by sliverstorm »

bradleyjg wrote: post #213
sliverstorm wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the pernicious and undemocratic over-representation of rural interests embodied in the structure of the Senate, I don't expect them to go anywhere. I'm sure the rural interests have the same thing to say about urban interests & the House. Which, really, means things are working as intended.

As intended is rather irrelevant to the question of whether or not it's a good system. Unless you think that the so-called founding fathers were infallible? A system which gives representation to rocks and cows rather than to people is undemocratic. That's not just my opinion man, it's a statement of fact. The House doesn't over-represent urban interests it represents them in the proportion that people of the country…

Of course it is undemocratic. This country wasn't built to be a perfect democracy. Allowing urban voters to dictate policy affecting rural voters under the name of democracy just because there are more urban voters could turn out to be a very bad idea, because urban voters are not necessarily well-informed on issues that apply to rural America. This in turn be bad for everyone, as the urban voters depend on rural America to produce food.

The debate over firearms is a simple example. Urban voters do not see why rural voters cannot simply depend on the police to maintain law and order. Rural voters on the other hand do not see why urban voters think the police can respond in time. The difference is their context. Urban voters are probably right- in the context of a city.

(I am not arguing about firearms, I just thought the debate was an easy illustrative example of how your context matters)

There aren't two sides to every issue. Often some people are just wrong.

I'm sure you are conveniently always on the side that is right? :)

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

#232

Post by Fomite »

Bjoern wrote: post #180
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…

> Bacteria don't desire anything, and they don't seek out anything or plan anything. Bacteria are not fully understood and there are things such as Quorum Sensing which implies some method to the chaos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum_sensing

There's also inputs into their environment that influence whether they move via random tumbling, or directed movement, allowing them to move toward something.

While they might not desire anything, they do definitely seek out things.

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

#233

Post by darkmighty »

resu_nimda wrote: post #197
mistercow wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm slightly bugged by "desire" type language because it does actually cause problems in how laymen think about evolution. It's not uncommon to hear them make the mistake of thinking evolution will "think ahead". But the bigger problem I have with it is the "anything we do ... bacteria will eventually discover". Some problems are just very difficult to evolve around, and it's hard to predict what they'll be even if y…

Evolution is actually a really crappy optimization algorithm. The reason it has worked so well is not that it is so effective, but because it's the only game in town. It took evolution billions of years to make machines that can run 60 miles per hour. You come off as being dismissive of the power and beauty of evolution, although I don't think that's your intent. Evolution assembled the most complex system known to e…

Evolution is a very generalized but very slow optimization algorithm, actually, and it's velocity is sort of inherently connected to the population size and lifespan, meaning it has to make trade-offs, it is limited. But because it's generic that means it can evolve faster mechanisms. I like to think of intelligence as this faster mechanism -- it came about because for living beings with a large lifespan evolving through natural barriers takes too long, so that this more time-localized procedure is needed.

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

#234

Post by nzealand »

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 don't doubt that if we devote enough attention, we can solve this problem. What I am afraid of, is that we will wait until it becomes a real and immediate threat before we dedicate any effort.

The black death bubonic plague killed around a hundred million people, almost half of Europe's population. World war 2 got close to that number of deaths, but the black plague bacterium remains the most efficient killer of humanity on record.

Something that terrible sometimes has to be personified, just to make it comprehensible.

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

#236

Post by Fomite »

snake_plissken wrote: post #98
erichurkman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now we have no weapons; we're helpless and the world is again going to be a scary place where a cut or a scrape can land you in a hospital or in a mortuary. Perhaps most terrifying is that the mere act of hospitalization will likely be the highest vector of transmission of nearly untreatable infections. Go in for a routine procedure and end up in the isolation ward due to some highly infectious, deadly disease.

This is what I don't completely understand. Why has no one developed a disinfectant spray that hospitals can apply ad-nauseum (pun intended, the smell ideally wouldn't make people nauseous) all over the hospital? Or, do I not understand the vectors properly? The way I perceive these stories is that hospitals are actually extremely dirty on a microbial level (as is most of the world), it's just counter-intuitive becau…

We do. We have disinfectant sprays, chlorhexidine, bleach, UV radiation shot by Cylon looking robots, and surfaces made of copper and patterned after shark skin.

Bacteria are just bloody durable, and people are shedding new bacteria into the environment at really absurd rates.

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

#237

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

dylandrop wrote: post #171
ctdonath wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the threat thereof that persuades compliance. If you try hard enough to do & keep doing something illegal, there is no limit which the state is unwilling to go to in coercing compliance.

Of course, because if we make feeding antibiotics to livestock illegal, it can only be enforced by lynch mobs. C'mon. Do you really think every food regulation is being watched by military police who will come and beat you up if you break said regulation?

Probably not: http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-h...

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

#238

Post by philsnow »

alexandros wrote: post #168
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…

Thinking about the ideas you bring up.. it seems we humans have been playing on the same level as the bacteria upto now. Greedy algorithm vs greedy algorithm. Could we perhaps use certain antibiotics that will force bacteria to evolve in a way that opens up a certain weak spot which we will then allow to spread through their population before we step in and wipe them out using this forced back-door? This simple 1-2 p…

I think the problem with this kind of idea is that there are so many bacteria all over the world and you'll never reach all of them.

Recall the very mechanism that makes bacteria resistant over time: an antibiotic is deployed over a population of bacteria that have largely the same genotype but there are lots of mutations thrown in because they divide so fast. If any of the bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic, they survive and create a new population, again with largely the same genotype with lots of mutations thrown in, but this new population is entirely resistant to that antibiotic.

Now you've probably been visualizing a human body or a petri dish when I talk about "a population of bacteria", but consider the entire Earth. You'll never deploy an antibiotic across all the nooks and crannies of the entire Earth, and even if you were to, you'd just get an ~evenly spread population of bacteria, resistant to that antibiotic.

I guess you could _try_, if you were a supervillain or something.

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

#239

Post by Fomite »

bradleyjg wrote: post #85

It's an insane world we live in where all the measures that should be used to control the distribution of antibiotics exist, but they are used instead for opiates. I'm not saying opiates addiction isn't a genuine problem, but it's a largely individual one. There's no widespread negative externalities to prescribing opiates to a patient. Antibiotics on the other hand, present a classic limited pool resource allocation…

Many hospitals have rather elaborate approval mechanisms for the use of "the good stuff" in terms of antibiotics. Just FYI.

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

#240

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

sliverstorm wrote: post #208
kephra wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antibiotics in animal farms should be banned world wide. Unfortunate the only nation who has the power to convince others joining this ban, is one of the worst abusers of antibiotics. Consumers might have a choice, if they are wealthy enough to afford it. If you are a beef consumer, eat beef from Namibia, where antibiotics for animals are banned, and avoid US or South Africa. Ask you butcher, if he can offer antibiot…

Antibiotics in animal farms should be banned world wide. Why? The problem isn't giving antibiotics to animals. Antibiotics are useful for animals the same way they are useful for controlling disease in humans. The problem is abuse of antibiotics.

Antibiotics are routinely included in animal feed as a prophylactic.
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