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The superbug that doctors have been dreading just reached the U.S.[W:79]

jmotivator

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...tors-have-been-dreading-just-reached-the-u-s/

"For the first time, researchers have found a person in the United States carrying bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort, an alarming development that the top U.S. public health official says could mean "the end of the road" for antibiotics.

The antibiotic-resistant strain was found last month in the urine of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Department of Defense researchers determined that she carried a strain of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin, according to a study published Thursday in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. The authors wrote that the discovery "heralds the emergence of a truly pan-drug resistant bacteria."

Colistin is the antibiotic of last resort for particularly dangerous types of superbugs, including a family of bacteria known as CRE, which health officials have dubbed "nightmare bacteria." In some instances, these superbugs kill up to 50 percent of patients who become infected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called CRE among the country's most urgent public health threats."



That's... disconcerting.
 
Yeah it is. Evolution may have made us smart enough to invent antibiotics. But now it looks like evolution is going to bite us in the ass.
 
In life on Earth's 4.5 billion year history, 99% of all species have bit the big one. No doubt humans will see their day.
 
Overuse of antibiotics in both humans and livestock is biting us in the ass.
 
In life on Earth's 4.5 billion year history, 99% of all species have bit the big one. No doubt humans will see their day.

Indeed.

And after listening to some of the conversations taking place here in DP...perhaps it is overdue.

I'd really rather it not happen until after we perfect AI...which should happen during the lifetime of people now alive.
 
Indeed.

And after listening to some of the conversations taking place here in DP...perhaps it is overdue.

I'd really rather it not happen until after we perfect AI...which should happen during the lifetime of people now alive.

How about a round on me first? May be enough high proof hooch can kill those bugs.
 
In life on Earth's 4.5 billion year history, 99% of all species have bit the big one. No doubt humans will see their day.

Not until after this weekend. I have a tee time.
 
How about a round on me first? May be enough high proof hooch can kill those bugs.

It'd be fun tryin' to find "the cure" that way.

As an aside: I've been active in three other forums...and in each, groups of us got together in real life for a drink once in a while. The group around The Big Apple always has lots of folk ready for a meet. We have a good time...and post pictures of the gathering.

See no indication of any of that happening here.
 
"made its way to the USA"...as every such disease does. The government can't screen out poop bacteria, yet they are the ones who will keep us safe from Isis infiltrating the USA! Doesn't feel very reassuring.
 
"made its way to the USA"...as every such disease does. The government can't screen out poop bacteria, yet they are the ones who will keep us safe from Isis infiltrating the USA! Doesn't feel very reassuring.

:inandout:
 
Overuse of antibiotics in both humans and livestock is biting us in the ass.

Well, from what I have read because of miss use we have shortened the useful life of the antibiotics by about half. That is significant. And really really stupid. It goes to show that our civilization no longer works, and as I have said elsewhere I have concluded that it is in a death spiral. Losing the war on bugs, climate change, lawlessness (terrorism), income stratification.....which one will be the nail in the coffin?
 
Indeed.

And after listening to some of the conversations taking place here in DP...perhaps it is overdue.

I'd really rather it not happen until after we perfect AI...which should happen during the lifetime of people now alive.

AI is susceptible to a virus as well.:lol:
 
Yeah it is. Evolution may have made us smart enough to invent antibiotics. But now it looks like evolution is going to bite us in the ass.

a lot of it is profitability, sadly. it's much more profitable to produce medicines which treat other conditions, and novel antibiotic discovery is, to put it simply, very difficult and expensive. part of the solution, IMO, would be to use the public research sector to do it. fund university research with NIH grants, and when a new antibiotic is discovered, produce that publicly, too. then share the proceeds with the university that discovered the medicine.

in this country, we have an aversion to anything that doesn't produce large profits for a private entity, so it probably won't happen. either way, it's a potential solution.
 
It'd be fun tryin' to find "the cure" that way.

As an aside: I've been active in three other forums...and in each, groups of us got together in real life for a drink once in a while. The group around The Big Apple always has lots of folk ready for a meet. We have a good time...and post pictures of the gathering.

See no indication of any of that happening here.

It would be fun. I think it would be interesting to see who you have been debating all this time. A big problem is we are scattered all over the world on this forum. Logistics would be difficult especially for those of us struggling to make ends meet.

Right now I can barely afford to pay attention.
If Hillary gets in I wont be able to afford even that.
 
"made its way to the USA"...as every such disease does. The government can't screen out poop bacteria, yet they are the ones who will keep us safe from Isis infiltrating the USA! Doesn't feel very reassuring.

We can't stop 10's of millions of people from strolling across our border. The governments solution is to reward them for breaking our laws. God help us if our government takes the same approach to deadly diseases.

Oh that's right they do. Remember Ebola. It can only jump to animals in Africa not here in the US. Remember that lie. Oh then we have everything under control and the first patient they bring over infects 2 people. Remember that debacle. Then no one with the disease will run around the country and possibly spread it. Remember that lie. While they failed to spread Ebola all over this country maybe next time they will be successful. Or better yet maybe they can spread this disease instead.
 
But if the AI stays away from Porn Sites the chance of getting a virus is much lower

You just know that the AI will be checking out Tom's Hardware when you aren't looking.
 
It'd be fun tryin' to find "the cure" that way.

As an aside: I've been active in three other forums...and in each, groups of us got together in real life for a drink once in a while. The group around The Big Apple always has lots of folk ready for a meet. We have a good time...and post pictures of the gathering.

See no indication of any of that happening here.

Ah, the old "you guys are jerks who should die from the plague, why don't we get together for drinks" gambit.
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...tors-have-been-dreading-just-reached-the-u-s/

"For the first time, researchers have found a person in the United States carrying bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort, an alarming development that the top U.S. public health official says could mean "the end of the road" for antibiotics.

The antibiotic-resistant strain was found last month in the urine of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Department of Defense researchers determined that she carried a strain of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin, according to a study published Thursday in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. The authors wrote that the discovery "heralds the emergence of a truly pan-drug resistant bacteria."

Colistin is the antibiotic of last resort for particularly dangerous types of superbugs, including a family of bacteria known as CRE, which health officials have dubbed "nightmare bacteria." In some instances, these superbugs kill up to 50 percent of patients who become infected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called CRE among the country's most urgent public health threats."



That's... disconcerting.

Setting aside the sensationalism for a second; it's not exactly a new problem or even new to the United States. This has always been a problem with cancer and to much more disconcerting effect. Many types of cancers can and do become immune to all chemotherapy medications within several generations of cells, which could be a few years, months, or weeks. At which time there are no more options that wouldn't also kill the patient. This includes some cancers arising from transmissible oncoviruses.
 
Setting aside the sensationalism for a second; it's not exactly a new problem or even new to the United States. This has always been a problem with cancer and to much more disconcerting effect. Many types of cancers can and do become immune to all chemotherapy medications within several generations of cells, which could be a few years, months, or weeks. At which time there are no more options that wouldn't also kill the patient. This includes some cancers arising from transmissible oncoviruses.

Can and do cancers go into a human population and wipe out 40% of the individuals in 2 years?

You seem to not understand scale.
 
Can and do cancers go into a human population and wipe out 40% of the individuals in 2 years?

You seem to not understand scale.

The article says that the strain in question is treatable with other antiobiotics so let's keep it in perspective. All that means is that it is resistant to existing drugs developed specifically with this bacteria in mind, but it is still vulnerable to other antibiotics so it isnt incurable. Cancer on the other hand will kill the patient unless it is detected and eradicated early and within a narrow window of time at best. The mortality rate in many types of cancers is over 80% and some over 90% and around 40% of the population will have cancer at some point in their life. How is that for scale?
 
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The article says that the strain in question is treatable with other antiobiotics so let's keep it in perspective. All that means is that it is resistant to existing drugs developed specifically with this bacteria in mind, but it is still vulnerable to other antibiotics so it isnt incurable. Cancer on the other hand will kill the patient unless it is detected and eradicated early and within a narrow window of time at best. The mortality rate in many types of cancers is over 80% and some over 90% and around 40% of the population will have cancer at some point in their life. How is that for scale?

If we cant kill the bugs then the bugs go back to killing at close to the same rate that they used to. Maybe we can keep transmission rates lower through clean living, but dont count on it.
 
If we cant kill the bugs then the bugs go back to killing at close to the same rate that they used to. Maybe we can keep transmission rates lower through clean living, but dont count on it.

We haven't arrived at that point yet. This strain is still treatable with existing antibiotics. It's just being sensationalized by people who don't know that doctors use all sorts of medications all the time for things they weren't originally developed to treat so the fact that this practice is necessary for this bacteria should be eliciting nothing more than a sea of shrugging shoulders.
 
We haven't arrived at that point yet. This strain is still treatable with existing antibiotics. It's just being sensationalized by people who don't know that doctors use all sorts of medications all the time for things they weren't originally developed to treat.

Correct, but we do know that new classes these drugs tend to take 20-30 years to develop, we know that there is almost nothing in the pipeline, and we have a good idea of how fast the effectiveness of the current drugs is dying.

The first new antibiotic to be discovered in nearly 30 years has been hailed as a ‘paradigm shift’ in the fight against the growing resistance to drugs.

Teixobactin has been found to treat many common bacterial infections such as tuberculosis, septicaemia and C. diff, and could be available within five years.

But more importantly it could pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics because of the way it was discovered.

Scientists have always believed that the soil was teeming with new and potent antibiotics because bacteria have developed novel ways to fight off other microbes.

But 99 per cent of microbes will not grow in laboratory conditionsleaving researchers frustrated that they could not get to the life-saving natural drugs.

Now a team from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, have discovered a way of using an electronic chip to grow the microbes in the soil and then isolate their antibiotic chemical compounds.

They discovered that one compound, Teixobactin, is highly effective against common bacterial infections Clostridium difficile, Mycobacterium tuberculous and Staphylococcus aureus.

First new antibiotic in 30 years discovered in major breakthrough

Good news yes, but that in green should alarm you. As well as new studies that show that the old drugs are dying even faster than we thought. Also, what we need are whole new classes of drugs, ones that operate in ways much different than the old drugs, because fiddling with the old drugs has been done to exhaustion, there is nothing left to get out of them. We are not there yet, we have not discovered such a thing.
 
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