By Jerome Groopman
Issue: Aug 11-18
The moral of this story is: don't get sick and don't end up in the hospital.
According to Dr. Christian Giske of Stockholm, we are returning to a "preantibiotic era." The widespread use of antibiotics (for people and in our food products) has caused some strains of bacteria to develop resistance to all of our viable medicines.
New strains of potent bacteria have been appearing all over, especially in hospitals where cross-contamination is an issue. These bacteria don't show up on a certain type of test and so are called "gram-negative." The article goes through the ways that the bacteria's DNA could become resistant and talks about how widespread antibiotics are (they even appear in people in an isolated cannibalistic tribe in the Solomon Islands).
Basically, we have been using too many of our good, last-line-of-defense antibiotics and doctors (or someone) should have been better at reserving them for really serious situations. There won't be any easy breakthoughs for new kinds of antibiotics, but the answer might come from other biological medicines (like a counter-bacteria).
For now, though, don't get sick with one of these superbugs because no one can help you yet.
You probably thought scariest part of the article was either that there was an outbreak at the respected NY Tisch hospital. Or that the bacteria can do this cool thing called "quorum sensing" where they wait to release their "virulence genes" (crap that makes you sick) so that they don't trigger your natural defenses until there are enough of them around that it is too late for you.
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