Age of safe medicine is ending

They have warned about this for ages: that over use of antibiotics will make too many bacteria resistent.
But no one wants to listen - for reasons of money.
I sometimes feel that the way we have arranged our societies is more than a little suicidal.


Health chief warns: age of safe medicine is ending


There is a global crisis in antibiotics caused by rapidly evolving resistance among microbes responsible for common infections that threaten to turn them into untreatable diseases, said Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO.


Addressing a meeting of infectious disease experts in Copenhagen, she said that every antibiotic ever developed was at risk of becoming useless.

Dr Chan was speaking as the World Health Organisation launched The Evolving Threat of Antimicrobial Resistance: Options for Action, a book which warns that breakthrough treatments discovered in the last century for flu, tuberculosis, malaria and HIV may become ineffective in the coming years.


She called for action to restrict the use of antibiotics in food production and a crackdown on counterfeit medicines. "Worldwide, the fact that greater quantities of antibiotics are used in healthy animals than in unhealthy humans is a cause for great concern," she said.

"From an industry perspective, why invest considerable sums of money to develop a new antimicrobial when irrational use will accelerate its ineffectiveness before the investment can be recouped?"

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...g-7574579.html

We have two such super bugs here called VRE and MRSA that are totally infested in pretty much all hospitals despite their best efforts.

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Originally Posted by denuseri

We have two such super bugs here called VRE and MRSA that are totally infested in pretty much all hospitals despite their best efforts.

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MRSA's pretty widespread and nasty, but not impossible to treat effectively - yet. If misguided antibiotic use continues that could change, though...

I mention it mainly because its one of those things that developed because of the misuse of antibiotics and having large numbers of sick people congregated in one area over time. Not too mention more often than not; once you get it (if you survive your initial bout with it, if they manage to treat it) your likely hood of getting it again is very high.

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Originally Posted by denuseri

We have two such super bugs here called VRE and MRSA that are totally infested in pretty much all hospitals despite their best efforts.

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Same in UK, and I belive at least one of them in DK, very probably both.

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Originally Posted by denuseri

I mention it mainly because its one of those things that developed because of the misuse of antibiotics and having large numbers of sick people congregated in one area over time. Not too mention more often than not; once you get it (if you survive your initial bout with it, if they manage to treat it) your likely hood of getting it again is very high.

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Sounds like it isn't really cured - situation leading to chronic illness.

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Originally Posted by js207

MRSA's pretty widespread and nasty, but not impossible to treat effectively - yet. If misguided antibiotic use continues that could change, though...

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Exactly. And apparently one very big misuse is the widespread use of antibiotics in non-infected domestic animals - which can lead to resistance in humans eating that meat. As I understand it, they are peppered with anti biotics to survive the conditions they live under.

Hm - revenge of illtreated animals?? Would be justice, actually.

Another is apparently overuse of antibiotics, because people have to hurry back to work and do not have time to wait for their own system to deal with it.

And a third is, as Deniseri mentions, large numbers of people in cities, and infected people in hospitals.