Op-Ed: The End Of The Era Of Antibiotics - Boston Globe

[hatrack]

EDIT

For decades, we have lived in blissful ignorance of the infectious diseases that tormented earlier generations. Just take a pill, or get a shot, and they will go away. But the miracle drugs are starting to fail, even for common diseases - and we have ourselves to blame.

Consider gonorrhea, a nasty sexually transmitted disease which is now heading toward the point of breakout. This month, scientists announced that a Japanese sex worker had a case of the disease that was highly resistant to the antibiotics that are currently the last line of defense. At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that gonorrhea in the United States is showing signs of decreased susceptibility to those same final-resort antibiotics. The CDC, not known for hysteria, stated the danger starkly: “Untreatable gonorrhea may become a reality in the U.S.’’

Gonorrhea is already fairly common in America, with more than 700,000 new infections annually. If untreated in women, it can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, and even infertility. Men, too, can be left infertile. Gonorrhea can also spread to the blood. It can be fatal.

We can hope for a new medicine, but antibiotic development is not an area of great interest to Big Pharma. And if nobody devises a new treatment regimen in time, then gonorrhea will become super-gonorrhea. The number of cases will explode, and the vicious complications will move from rare to common. A scourge would come roaring back. How did this happen? The driving forces are Darwin and human carelessness. Bacteria are constantly evolving, adapting to the changing conditions they face. Antibiotics usually kill bacteria. But sometimes a bacteria will develop a biological defense - particularly if too small a dose is used. Gonorrhea bacteria have proven especially adept at developing defenses, for reasons that remain mysterious.

EDIT

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/07/24/the_end_of_the_era_of_antibiotics/

[Tesha]

1. Laurie Garett talked about this ages ago in "The Coming Plague".

But "who could have foreseen this?", right?

Tesha

[DCKit]

3. Oh my Dog, how DARE you bring that up (forseen).

Bwahahahahaha. Some things just seem to follow one another, and I keep catching myself thinking "But yeah, what did they expect was going to happen?"

We're all going to turn blue from taking colloidal silver.

[mistertrickster]

2. Education = wear a condom. This is what one would expect from "abstinence only." nt