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The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

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Re: The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

#171

Post by thayne »

hristov wrote: post #128
zosima wrote: post #15

I am quite sure, that if a sufficient bounty was given out for developing new kinds of antimicrobials, they'd be developed in no time. The problem is that cost and risk of development and trials is too large for the current rewards, and hence there is very little new antimicrobials being developed. There are very many promising leads though, and either making development cheaper (by requiring smaller or fewer clinica…

What if new antimicrobials do get developed? They will once again be used in massive quantities in dirty and otherwise unsanitary livestock operations, resistant bacteria will develop again and we will be where we started again. Actually we will be at a worse place from where we started because all new antimicrobials that do get developed seem ever more dangerous with ever increasing lists of ever more serious side e…

One way to handle that could be to regulate when the new drugs are used, and only allow use for humans when there are resistant microbes.

Re: The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

#172

Post by DoughnutHole »

thayne wrote: post #171
hristov wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if new antimicrobials do get developed? They will once again be used in massive quantities in dirty and otherwise unsanitary livestock operations, resistant bacteria will develop again and we will be where we started again. Actually we will be at a worse place from where we started because all new antimicrobials that do get developed seem ever more dangerous with ever increasing lists of ever more serious side e…

One way to handle that could be to regulate when the new drugs are used, and only allow use for humans when there are resistant microbes.

This would require massive international cooperation and possibly even sanctions on countries with lax regulations.

If you have one country with lax or no antibiotic regulations then that country is going to continue breeding antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Those pathogens will pretty much inevitably escape out to more responsible countries.

This is theoretically doable, but as it stands you can't even get every country to abide by sanctions to discourage proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Re: The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

#173

Post by Thorentis »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #85
Thorentis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It is difficult to understand what you are trying to say with this comment. What are you trying to communicate with it? Could you express your intent in some other way which might make it clearer?

Traditional morality around sex, dating, and marriage, is one solution to reducing the prevalence of STDs. It doesn't eliminate it, and there will always be edge cases, but it does "flatten the curve" so to speak, as much as people may not like to admit it.

Re: The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

#174

Post by sattoshi »

landemva wrote: post #167
Llamamoe wrote: post #161

Just like global warming, ridiculous wealth inequality and housing crises, outdated primary education systems, air and water pollution, diabetes and obesity crises, increasing prevalence of autism, and still ongoing COVID need action. I think the pandemic gave us a good reality check about how much is going to actually get done about an urgent crisis: not much.

Describing everything you identify with as a crisis seems overdone. A crisis that extends over years is hardly an emergency. There may be better language to attract people to get involved in your projects.

What an excellent strategy to deal with any emergent crisis — do nothing! After enough time passes, it is no longer an emergency.

Re: The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

#175

Post by midoridensha »

salawat wrote: post #166
midoridensha wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to create nanides: nano-scale machines that can differentiate between microbes and destroy the bad ones. Just don't piss them off with a phaser blast when they get into the ship's computer core.

Look into immunology, it's a biologically mostly solved problem with the mammalian adaptive immune system. ...In the sense we're here because an implementation evolved, however, the physics and minutiae of the problem domain are so numerous that even nature with billions of years of time, and the happy accident of intelligent tool using life haven't been able to make significant inroads on nailing down the problems s…

The Covid pandemic shows that immunology is very much not a "solved problem". Any time someone dies of a disease caused by a virus, bacteria, or even cancer, this shows that immunology is very much unfinished.

Re: The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

#176

Post by Fomite »

oa335 wrote: post #164
Fomite wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...that is not how I've ever heard "the ecological fallacy" used, and this is what I do for a living.

What is your line of work and how is concept of “the ecological fallacy” used there?

Epidemiology and disease ecology, particularly of antimicrobial resistant pathogens.

The Wikipedia entry for it gives the definition I've always seen: "An ecological fallacy is a formal fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data that occurs when inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inferences about the group to which those individuals belong."

Re: The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

#177

Post by ItsHarper »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #142
MobileVet wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mRNA vaccines were tested on 10ks of people before they were released to the general public. While the timelines were sped up and access to larger bodies of test subjects, the testing phase was not skipped by any stretch

So we're just going to forget that the labs faked test results and lied? Before you downvote as fake news, a Democratic AG sued over it.

I think you're talking about this, which is about a shady company faking COVID test results, not faking vaccine test results.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/01/19/center-for-covid-con...

Re: The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

#178

Post by SonOfLilit »

midoridensha wrote: post #175
salawat wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look into immunology, it's a biologically mostly solved problem with the mammalian adaptive immune system. ...In the sense we're here because an implementation evolved, however, the physics and minutiae of the problem domain are so numerous that even nature with billions of years of time, and the happy accident of intelligent tool using life haven't been able to make significant inroads on nailing down the problems s…

The Covid pandemic shows that immunology is very much not a "solved problem". Any time someone dies of a disease caused by a virus, bacteria, or even cancer, this shows that immunology is very much unfinished.

GP means that evolution solved it to a certain extent and we human engineers are still way behind it in terms of the performance of our solutions

Re: The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

#179

Post by SonOfLilit »

bee_rider wrote: post #29
SonOfLilit wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this putting less selection pressure on them?

I’d guess that since they don’t die, they can go on to reproduce elsewhere.

But that's the thing, it's not very intuitive but selection pressure doesn't distinguish between dead and banished. Selection pressure means "instead of 100k bacteria, there are now only 100 bacteria that are the best at surviving this environment, and there is enough food for 100k, so they are going to grow back to 100k very quickly, all of them with the better survival skills"

Re: The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

#180

Post by clnq »

hristov wrote: post #129
clnq wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phage therapy is already used in Eastern Europe and Russia. I received phage therapy there myself against an antibiotic-resistant GI infection about 15 years ago. It has been effective. Of course, this is a sample size of 1. I genuinely believe that ideological and political stigma still stands in the way of phage research and use in the West as it did in the cold war when phages were considered "Soviet". More though…

Another reason why phages aren't used in western countries is that it is difficult to make money off of them. As I understand it, phages are bred uniquely for each strain which means it is difficult to patent them. The strains change all the time, therefore the phages have to change, by the time you get a patent for one, it is already likely to be ineffective. Furthermore, the process of breeding phages for each dise…

I don't know how the economics can or would work out for a modern drug company. It's agreeable that Western personalized medicine seems to lag behind Europe and Asian countries like China.

However, this Georgian phage producer does sell patentable boxed-up phages that consume common bacteria, like S. aureus, which has been discussed for its antibiotic resistance in academia a lot - https://phage.ge/products/pyo-bacteriophage/?lang=en. Years ago, I stumbled across some online stores that used to sell these products in Europe and the US, but now I can't find them.

This makes me think that a traditional distribution model for these drugs can work. But there is too much medical skepticism for phage demand. And phages are often slower to work than antibiotics, so the latter option is more practical in treatment... when it works.

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