Children watch their parents play with shiny technical objects all day. Parents cradle them, caress them, never let them out of their hands. When mothers breast feed their infants, the shiny objects are in their hands, at their ears. When parents bring their toddlers to the park, they share their attention with the shiny objects to the point that children are jealous and indeed, often go unattended. Playground accidents are up.

As soon as children are old enough to express their desires, children want the objects as well and few parents say no. In parental slang, it has become known as the "passback," passing back the iPhone to quiet your toddler in the rear seat of the car.

In the 1840s, Benjamin Disraeli, still a long way from being prime minister of England, wanted to wake people up to the plight of the British working class -- and move them to act. The alarm he sounded wasn't delivered in a speech, a pamphlet, or an article -- but in a novel, Sybil, published in 1845. It had the desired effect -- raising awareness, provoking outrage, and leading to the passage of several fundamental social reforms.

Disraeli knew that one of the most effective ways to touch people is through narrative -- putting flesh and blood on raw facts and data. Ever since I read Sybil when I was at Cambridge, I've loved thinkers and writers and gadflies who use storytelling to reach people and get us to act. Of course, since Disraeli's time, other powerful ways of telling those stories have emerged -- including movies.

And so it was that I found myself moderating a panel discussion last week with the director and two cast members (Frank Grillo and Marc Jacobs -- yes, that Marc Jacobs!) of a movie that uses storytelling to wake us up to one of the biggest problems of our modern age: the effect that being "connected" to technology 24/7 is having on our ability to connect with our lives, ourselves and the people we love.

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same. (Carlos Castaneda)

Drug-resistant germs called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, have become more resistant to last-resort antibiotics during the past decade, a new report in CDC's Vital Signs indicates. The bacteria are causing more hospitalized patients to get infections that can be impossible to treat.

CRE germs kill one of every two patients who get bloodstream infections from them, and they readily transfer their antibiotic resistance to other bacteria. "For example, carbapenem-resistant klebsiella can spread its drug-destroying weapons to a normal E. coli bacteria, which makes the E.coli resistant to antibiotics also. That could create a nightmare scenario since E. coli is the most common cause of urinary tract infections in healthy people, according to the agency.

Making Health Care Safer
Stop Infections from Lethal CRE Germs Now
CRE infections are spreading, and urgent action is needed to stop them.


Although CRE germs are not very common, they have increased from 1% to 4% in the past decade. One type of CRE has increased from 2% to 10%.
CRE are more common in some US regions, such as the Northeast, but 42 states report having had at least one patient test positive for one type of CRE.
About 18% of long-term acute care hospitals and about 4% of short-stay hospitals in the US had at least one CRE infection during the first half of 2012.
CRE's ability to spread themselves and their resistance raises the concern that potentially untreatable infections could appear in otherwise healthy people.
CRE infections can be prevented.

Medical facilities in several states have reduced CRE infection rates by following CDC's prevention guidelines (see box).
Israel decreased CRE infection rates in all 27 of its hospitals by more than 70% in one year with a coordinated prevention program.
The US is at a critical time in which CRE infections could be controlled if addressed in a rapid, coordinated, and consistent effort by doctors, nurses, lab staff, medical facility leadership, health departments/states, policy makers, and the federal government.