Peak Pill

Fortunately, there *is* one underused technology that can be used to combat bacterial infections: bacteriophages. Bacteriophages are viruses of bacteria. They can invade and kill bacterial colonies just like flu viruses can invade and kill human cells.

Furthermore, there is one advantage to bacteriophages that antibiotics don't have: they can *evolve*. If you have a new strain of bacteria, there are ways to make the phages evolve to the point where they're deadly to the bacteria. Then use the new strain of phages on the patient.

Bacteriophages were used for years in the Soviet Union, where they were quite effective. I don't know why they aren't used more in Western medicine.

Perhaps they will be now....

Why would they want to save anyone anyway, especially when their spending so much time and energy making everyone as sick as they can.

Did you think the Banksters and their Government lackey’s would steal all your money, bankrupt your nation, put millions in debt for generations, and not have a getaway plan?

loki's expert advice in 3............2...........1...........

BTW, the last line of that article says "developing drugs that can counter the resistant strains of viruses." That's an obvious typo. He meant "the resistant strain of bacteria."

That will segue into:

"Don't worry folks we have vaccine for EVERY little thing ...just get in line"

Captcha 7kqbug...no kidding!

Isn't it interesting that the "end of the antibiotic age" comes right at the beginning of the Obamacare age.

It's almost like they want to hold back the effective antibiotics in case the people in power (you know, your betters) get sick. And if you don't like that, you can just switch health provi- oops! Hah!

Just sayin'.

80% of the antibiotics are consumed by industrial meat operations, and that's what's causing the problems with drug resistant super-bugs. The antibiotic laced manure pits of CAFOs are breeding the next drug resistant plagues. There's an 'island' of MRSA surrounding nearly every CAFO. On a positive note, it might just solve the overpopulation problem that drives all the rest.

Commercial operations are mostly to blame. Antibiotics given routinely to overcrowded animals, but also hospitals need to carry their fair share of the blame.

50 years ago, medical staff were taught basic hygiene, and relied on that, as they had in the days before antibiotics, to limit the spread of infectious disease. These days, you almost never see a doctor or nurse wash their hands when moving from one patient to the next. They rely on sterile everything, but don't seem to understand that the sterility is lost when their dirty hands touch whatever it was they just ripped out of its packaging.

Surfaces are cleaned with antibiotic wipes, not using something like carbolic soap, because it might make their hands red... etc. etc.

Antibiotics are given after even minor surgery because the lack of sterile procedure pretty much guarantees infection will occur otherwise.

The result is MSRA, antibiotic resistant disease created in the hospital.

THe FDA really has nothing to do with this. They just approve new drugs and monitor if dangerous side effects develop. Antimicrobial resistance monitoring is not in their mandate. Never was as resistance is not an adverse reaction or side effect of antibiotics per se.
And the FDA has approved several new antibiotics, including a new TB drug (the first in 40 yrs!!) over the last 5 years. But the pace has slowed.

Antimicrobial resistance monitoring is the mandate of the CDC and in Canada, of the Public Health Agency.
I have been working in antimicrobial stewardship programs for about 20 years. Most of the resistant bacteria are opportunistic, so with good infection control and judicial use of antibiotics, these remain a problem primarily in very sick patients in hospitals and were contained.

Now the issue are virulent bugs that are resistant which can infect even healthy people, primarily methicillin resistant S. aureus and resistant TB. These problem bugs first arose in the drug addict and HIV populations.

My tips for preventing bacterial infections
1. don't do IV drugs. Ever.
2. Be monogamous.
3. don't get diabetes (sugar is a great growth medium)
4. don't take drugs to suppress stomach acid (antacids, Nexium, Tecta etc). Your acidic stomach is the first line of defence..well and your skin
5. in general, don't take an antibiotic unless you have a fever (defined as one >38.5C). (Exceptions abound, I know..). Use for the shortest time possible
6. the usual i.e. get enough sleep, exercise, eat well, wash your hands (and bedsheets) with soap, yada yada…
7. don't use antibacterial soaps and cleaners at home (triclosan selects out for resistant organisms)
8. get some sun and take vitamin D during the winter
9. Probiotics are our friends (by substituting susceptible organisms for the resistant ones)

Virus infections are different

If that were all there were to it, I'd be looking forward to seeing the expressions on the faces of unrepentant liberal boomers when it was explained that they would have to be content with three score and ten, not the four score and fifteen they thought they deserved, because giving them titanium hips and fresh young hearts, livers and lungs was no longer a realistic option even if their long-suffering taxpaying children (if any) could be convinced to cough up the money.

But, of course, it's far from that simple. Nobody who actually deserves an organ transplant will get one either.

The factory farms are a red herring. The money that was supposed to be devoted to basic research on uncovering new antibiotics---it was never a matter of if they would wear out, but when---was frittered away on "treatments" for the results of the boomers' sinful and debauched lifestyles, all completely avoidable if one has the wits to not smoke like a chimney, drink like a fish, eat like a pig or rut like a dog with anything with a pulse. If the money frittered away on AIDS alone had been applied to antibiotics research, and its so-called "victims" left to their well-deserved fate, we would not be having this conversation. Better every last sodomite and junkie in Canada than the next child from a Christian family to die of MRSA.

C'mon Dickhead Slater ........ tell what you're holding back. The usual stuff. You know, all the garbage you usually blather about the Pope being behind it all and the Roman church organizing all this disease and sickness and on and on in your usual insane manner.

THe FDA really has nothing to do with this. They just approve new drugs ...

That's my point.

I find it fascinating to think that bacteria can evolve to fight any new threat to its survival. Superbugs in a unseen universe having breakfast meetings to discuss the latest threat and how to counter it by adapting new defenses. It shows intelligence we can't even comprehend in a alien world we don't understand. Perhaps that's all we are as a species and for all we know our whole planetary system is just a bacteria enclave on something else's bed sheet. Whoohoo, I need another drink 'cause this is deep. I've seen the future where we develop warp drive and we come through a worm hole where suddenly a gigantic eye is looking at us. Perhaps the master, about to do the laundry with a strong disinfectant .......... or was that Star Trek ? Anyway, we should start having breakfast meetings and get to work on that warp drive thingy. Just in case the universe is not endless and we are a lot smaller than we think.

Oops, I misread LAS's note; sorry LAS, Valencia's right and you're wrong.

As far as being monogamous, I'd suggest that before entering into a new sexual relationship, both parties get tested for the common venereal diseases first. If one of the parties has HSV2 and the other doesn't, then daily valcyclovir suppression in the infected party would be a good idea before dispensing with condoms. However, the widespread popularity of cunnilingus has resulted in an equal number of genital HSV1 infections which are actually harder to treat than HSV2. Women should check if the male partner has a cold sore.

WRT IV drugs, only a total moron would inject cocaine in Vancouver which is often carried rolled up in bits of garbage bag in the carious mouths of central American drug dealers. Assuming one has a drug that isn't heavily contaminated with bacteria, it should be passed through a 0.2 micron millipore filter for sterilization and meticulous sterile technique should be observed for all steps of the process. I don't know of a single iv drug user who's capable of this, but, if one plans on injecting various drugs, that's the way to do it. Note that the 0.2 micron millipore filter doesn't remove potential viral contamination and that can be dealt with by various protein denaturing agents which would require recrystallization of the drug one plans to inject. The best way would be to obtain drugs only from reputable sources which eliminates about 90% of all illicit drug dealers.

Kate's right. We have so many rules now its become almost impossible for innovation. That's only half of it though.There are not enough researchers because of so many hoops to getting certification or degree's, plus other standards that have put up road blocks including monies for education. Less people can never even think of entering this profession.
Our medical schools focus more on Marx with tuition fees, than medicine.
Being a physician is now a political act.
Not to mention a medical orthodoxy set in stone that deters any progress.
After all antibiotics was an accidental find to begin with.
In a golden age of Genius now regulated away into a social arthritis.

Oh by all means, let's yank mediation that can cure 89% of the global poulation whose systems haven;t become immune to antibiotics because of dosing themselves with antibiotic-laced meat. More eugenics courtesy of big pharma.

// If the money frittered away on AIDS alone had been applied to antibiotics research, and its so-called "victims" left to their well-deserved fate, we would not be having this conversation. //

#!@&!%#@!

I first read about this problem in 1965, when it was called infectious drug resistance. This was because they found that bacteria with resistance to separate antibiotics could exchange genes & become resistant to both.
The race was on.

New Antibiotics: What's In the Pipelinelast of a series of articles on the problem. {with links to the others]