As living organisms, bacteria are encoded by DNA, and DNA occasionally mutates. Sometimes genetic mutations render a bacterium immune to an antibiotic’s chemical tactics. The few cells that might escape antibiotic pressure then have a sudden advantage: with their counterparts wiped out, resources abound, and the remaining antibiotic-resistant bacteria proliferate. It’s a problem not only for the host—you or me when we are treated with an antibiotic and develop a resistant strain—but also for anyone with whom we happen to share our resistant bacteria, say, on a door handle or keyboard. In fact, most resistant bacteria develop not in people but in livestock fed antibiotics to promote growth; these resistant bacteria infect people through contaminated animal products. This is how even antibiotic “naive” people come to be infected with resistant strains of bacteria.
I see this all the time as a family doctor. A woman has a urinary tract infection. I tell her that her bacteria are resistant to this or that antibiotic, and she says, “But I’ve never taken any of those.” Welcome to the global human soup.
We should have stopped irresponsible use of antibiotics decades ago.
But capitalism decided.
Patients also demand antibiotics even after the health care provider explains that they do no good. PCP’s are left with the choice of prescribing something or risk losing the patient.
So everyone gets a fun little z-pack for their viral infection, and then they get to post how the z-pack cleared things right up.
That use still pales in comparison to use in industrial farming.
Did the USSR not use antibiotics or something?
From the article …
WHILE PHAGE THERAPY was largely abandoned after the 1940s during the so-called golden age of antibiotics, microbiologists in Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics continued using phages in research and clinical applications.
One of my professors in university was a leading researcher in bacteriophage therapy. They did some amazing things in the 2000s with them, like elimination of only pathogenic strains of E. coli in livestock. I can only imagine what they could do with a budget more inline with pharmaceutical research than that available at a small state school that most students didn’t know had a sciences department.
Sure but they still used antibiotics and had their own production lines.
Australia what are you doing? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/antibiotic-usage-in-livestock
I don’t trust these figures at all. The USA’s factory farming is gargantuan. Canada is similar to Australia. The only way I could see this chart making sense is if there were diminishing returns in antibiotics at a certain scale or density, which doesn’t sound right either, or the winter climate reduced the need for antibiotics.
It’s impossible to know exactly what we don’t know. This is a big issue, but there are people taking it seriously. It seems likely new antibiotics which will work are going to be developed. For example: this new class that was discovered a couple months ago using AI.
The article discusses the ‘newest’ form of treatment …
BACTERIOPHAGES, or phages for short, are viruses that attack bacteria and kill them; the two organisms have been involved in an evolutionary cat-and-mouse game for millions of years. Phages are ever present in the environment, from sea water to barnyard waste—anywhere bacteria are found in high numbers.
Phage therapy has issues. It’s generally hyperspecific, with every strain of bacteria having its own phage, most of which we don’t have, and which they can become resistant to.
The article deals with that.
Greg German, a medical microbiologist at Unity Health Toronto, has collaborated at times with Nancy Tawil, a biomedical engineer with experience in phage production for the US-based company Precisio Biotix Therapeutics and as CEO of Qeen BioTherapeutics based in Gatineau, Quebec. For years, her production teams have been collecting libraries of phages from all over the world that infect and kill common human pathogens, such as Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas, Klebsiella, and Acinetobacter, all of which can cause life-threatening lung, brain, and blood infections. To date, most of Tawil’s research has been done on patients in the US. Qeen receives a sample of infected tissue, isolates the bacteria, screens its library for an effective phage—usually a cocktail of up to five phages—then ferments, multiplies, and purifies the phages, and delivers the mixture to the clinical team. That process takes between a week and two weeks. The price tag? About $45,000. According to Tawil, that’s the cost of making 200 litres of phage solution, whereas a patient might need only fifty millilitres for their treatment. Sometimes a phage found for one person can also work on another, reducing the cost of treatment per person.
oh, great
Ive nearly shit myself to death over the last 2 weeks thanks to antibiotic resistant campylobacter. Hoping the 3rd and 4th antibiotics can help me get rid of this thing.
Another reason to become vegetarian.
vegetarians still support the egg and dairy industry, which use massive amounts of antibiotics. the solution is veganism.
I know, but seeing the number of downvotes, it seems that many people still prefer to deny the problems.
A vegetarian that eats eggs is a sith.
Lemmy hates vegetarians. Just look at all the pro meat propaganda posted. They’re not even aware of that yet.
Which is surprising as becoming vegetarian is one of the best things you can do, as an individual, for the climate. It also tends to be quite healthy.
I’m not sure right now: Is my above comment downvoted because I wrote “vegetarian” and not “vegan”? Or are there really so many advocates of meat consumption here?
Given that in the real world there is propaganda to eat meat on every street corner, which is echoed everywhere online, I bet it’s the latter.
What are you talking about? Beans are totally vegetarian…
Another reason to regulate industry, as has already begun in the US and EU. Relying on individual behavioural changes to solve these types of systemic failures simply does not work.
But I’m glad it gives you a reason to feel morally superior.
I see those as complementary. In a democracy, political change can only come when individuals support it. Division is what prevents progress. Try to be decent and excellent.
They’re not.
History has proven over and over again that systemic change doesn’t happen through voluntary individual action unless government creates incentives or nudges to drive that action.
Admonishing people to eat less (or no) meat won’t solve the problem of antibiotic resistance any more than asking them to pollute less fixed global warming.
If anything, asking individuals to sacrifice to solve a problem caused by industry will just harden people against action as it directs blame in exactly the wrong direction.
The dichotomy of individuals and society/government is just an illusion. The government consists of individuals too. And every systemic change that was achieved through legislation is crafted by individuals in the government, who as a group formed new principles. Every single time when a new law is created in a democratic society, there has to be a critical mass of people who bring up that topic.
I don’t know where you live, but am not living in a kingdom or a monarchy where I look up to THE GOVERNMENT as some entity that decides over all the actions of the people, and to which I transfer full responsibility for my live and future.
As responsible people, we should not use the excuse that the system is against us when it comes to everyday life.
And by the way: a vegetarian or vegan or ecologically sensible lifestyle is not a “sacrifice”, but the free decision to lead a healthy and sustainable life. If someone wants that for themselves and their family, then you don’t wait for the government.
That doesn’t mean that I am against regulation of the industry. I simply said, if someone wants to avoid taking antibiotics with food, it’s a good reason to not eat meat.
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The US still allows Bayer to monopolize GMO seeds and herbicide in America, so it ain’t doing all it can do.
And the EU recently allowed Round-Up GMO seeds and herbicide usage … so not that good either.
Monoculture farming probably isn’t helping this either, if anything it makes it worse as a blight affecting a specific plant now hits harder. The US learned absolutely nothing from the dust bowl and has entire states full of corn and cows.
I’d rather they don’t. As long as others are dependent on meat, their total fitness shall remain lower than mine, giving me a very real competitive advantage.
