[Pops]

Bad Dot:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')arbapenems are a last line of defense against drug-resistant bacteria. While plasmid-mediated carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) have been reported in European and Asian livestock and are known to cause life-threatening infections in US healthcare settings, this is the first time they have been identified in US livestock.

[onlooker]

http://www.livescience.com/57248-nightm ... unity.html
'Nightmare' Superbug May Have Spread Outside Hospitals

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')size=150]A Woman Just Died From an Infection No U.S. Antibiotics Could Beat[/size]

The woman from Washoe, Nevada was in her 70s and had an infection in her hip. She’d contracted it in a hospital in India after fracturing her leg. Doctors in Reno attempted to tame her infection, trying every antibiotic they had. 26 in all. None of them worked, not even colistin, their last line of defense. The woman died.

The CDC’s report on her case, issued January 13, is sending a chill through the medical world: They’ve been worried for years about the appearance of a superbug that beats all of our antibiotics. Is this what happened here? It turns out that maybe she could have been saved using an antibiotic called fosfomycin not approved in the U.S. for treating the kind of infection she had. Even so, her case has troubling implications.

Post-mortem testing of the woman’s bacteria revealed that something new is going on. Previous infections that have been resistant to treatment with colistin have had a single critical gene, MCR-1. This woman’s bacteria didn’t have this gene, so there’s some previously undiscovered mechanism at work.

Even prior to this, the protective firewall provided by colistin has been cracking. The drug was discovered in 1949 but went largely unused for a long time due to its harmful effect on the kidneys. It came to prominence as a last-line drug after bacteria strains showed signs of developing resistance to other key antibiotics — colistin had been so infrequently used meant that bacteria hadn’t yet had the chance to develop resistance to it.

But those days are apparently over. Colistin has become a popular, inexpensive additive to animal feed as both an antibiotic and also a way to quickly add muscle to animals. Agricultural demand for the drug reached 11,942 tons per year in 2015, and is expected to reach 16,500 tones by 2022. (73% of it is used in Asia, and 28.7% in Europe.) And the MCR-1 gene is now found in livestock and humans, suggesting that colistin’s days as a super-antibacterial are numbered.

One of the scariest aspects of the MCR-1 gene, by the way, is that it doesn’t live in a bacteria’s chromosome. Instead, it’s contained in a plasmid, a small, unattached bit of DNA. What’s worrisome about this is that, being independent, it can attach to any bacteria, thus making it resistant to colistin. The danger is that an MCR-1 plasmid, having been consumed in pork or chicken, attaches to some other bacteria it encounters in your gut. This is clearly already happening in patients carrying the MCR-1 gene. And it may a lethal recipe for the evolution of pan-resistant bacteria.

Fosfomycin, the antibiotic to which the woman’s bacteria showed some reaction post-mortem, is another old drug for which little resistance has yet been developed. It’s approved in the U.S. for treatment of urinary-tract infections, but not for intravenous use in fighting infections. Some wonder if and when the U.S. FDA will widen its availability for use.

As for the woman in Nevada, she was, thankfully, kept well-isolated from other patients and staff. Samples taken from the hospital have so far shown no sign of her bacteria anywhere, so a deadly outbreak seems to have been avoided. For now.

[Ibon]

For years we have been hearing about these super bugs, isolated cases of patients dying due to failure of antibiotics. None of these bugs have yet jumped the confines of isolated cases in hospitals and have managed to spread far.

I am not holding my breath that this will happen any time soon. The Overshoot Predator is a lazy bastard for some reason when it comes to using pathogens.

A recent article mentions only 600 deaths in the past year to superbugs in the US. That's insignificant .

https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/16/cre-superbug/

This article is typical, full of the potential threat but when it comes down to actual transmission we see that these superbugs, for all their resistance, seem to be poor at transmitting disease.

Hanage said they didn’t find a lot of evidence of transmission, but they did see “a riot of diversity.” There were more specific families of bacteria represented among the CREs than they had expected. And there were additional surprises.

Folks, go back to worrying about climate change. I don't see anything on the horizon regarding superbugs coming to the aid of our planets infestation with the biggest superbug of all.........us.

[onlooker]

The Influenza Pandemic of 1918
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster. "
Have to agree in the sense that as a percentage of the population the world had approximately 1.8 billion people in 1918, so the Spanish flu killed about between 2 to 3 percent of the population. Now the plague was said to have killed from 1/3 to 1/2 of the European population. Which was before we had any of the modern effective medical techniques and knowledge of infection treatment and control. I can think of nothing really that will control our population and decrease it substantially except food shortages on a massive scale and an all out nuclear war. We may be in fact able to adapt to climate change over the long terms albeit with a smaller population.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'T')he Influenza Pandemic of 1918
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster. "
Have to agree in the sense that as a percentage of the population the world had approximately 1.8 billion people in 1918, so the Spanish flu killed about between 2 to 3 percent of the population. Now the plague was said to have killed from 1/3 to 1/2 of the European population. Which was before we had any of the modern effective medical techniques and knowledge of infection treatment and control. I can think of nothing really that will control our population and decrease it substantially except food shortages on a massive scale and an all out nuclear war. We may be in fact able to adapt to climate change over the long terms albeit with a smaller population.

[Cog]

The next series of bugs will be destroyed by genetic engineering.

[Shaved Monkey]

or Phage Therapy
Phages are naturally occurring viruses that kill bacteria.
Once they get into bacterial cells the phages' DNA replicates until it kills the host.
Soviets have been doing it for 90 years
Still Popular in Russia Poland and Georgia


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-21799534

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'T')he next series of bugs will be destroyed by genetic engineering.

[onlooker]

So it is not enough that we may need to take control of the Climate System from Nature but now we also have to take control of the Eon long battle with our nemesis bacteria and Viruses. Just another example of hubris thinking "our" technology can replace Nature/God.

[Tanada]

I vaguely recalled that the cure for everything was posted about some time ago and after nearly an hour of searching I found the thread.

peakoil.com/forums/post1212118.html

[onlooker]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/26/health/fi ... index.html
A dreaded superbug found for the first time in a U.S. woman

[ralfy]

"MAP: Find Out What New Viruses Are Emerging In Your Backyard"

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsod ... r-backyard

[vox_mundi]

Closing Border in Extreme Pandemics Worthwhile for Island Nations

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')img]https://shenanitims.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/resident-evil-afterlife-zombies-at-the-gate.png?w=450&h=245[/img]

It may sometimes make sense for island nations like New Zealand to temporarily close their borders in extreme pandemic situations, a new study by Wellington researchers suggests.

The study of costs and benefits of complete border closure in New Zealand in response to new pandemic threats has just been published in the international journal PLoS ONE.

One of the authors Professor Nick Wilson from the University of Otago, Wellington, says the study found that despite the costs/disruptions caused to tourism and even trade, there could be significant overall societal benefits to border closure in certain severe pandemic scenarios.

"With increasing risks of new pandemics due to the growing density of human populations and various socio-economic, environmental and ecological factors, there is a need to look at different scenarios for better pandemic planning," says Professor Wilson.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]"It will be a very hard call – but in the case of some severe pandemics it could save thousands of lives and huge costs from illness if border closure is rapidly achieved"

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'h')ttp://www.cnn.com/2016/05/26/health/first-superbug-cre-case-in-us/index.html
A dreaded superbug found for the first time in a U.S. woman

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'h')ttp://www.cnn.com/2016/05/26/health/first-superbug-cre-case-in-us/index.html
A dreaded superbug found for the first time in a U.S. woman

[EnergyUnlimited]

Well, regardless what actual truth about AIDS is, most are viewing it as a problem of predominant concern for certain risk groups.
These views are officially deemed politically incorrect but are rather prevalent and so most of men in their 20-ties do not perceive women as a cesspool of HIV.
"Use condom" mantras are also reassuring.
So we probably need a better superbug to get there.

[onlooker]

http://www.who.int/features/qa/79/en/
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hat is multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and how do we control it?
The 2 reasons why multidrug resistance continues to emerge and spread are mismanagement of TB treatment and person-to-person transmission

[ralfy]

"Berserk leprosy bacteria are wildly mutating to become extremely drug resistant"

[vox_mundi]

How Contagious Pathogens Could Lead to Nuke-Level Casualties

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')img]http://data.whicdn.com/images/17696859/2u61ro6_large.jpg[/img]

What if nuclear bombs could reproduce? Get your hands on one today, and in a week's time you've got a few dozen. Of course, nukes don't double on their own. But contagious, one-celled pathogens do. Properly packaged as a bioweapon, they could kill as many people as a hydrogen bomb would, or more.

Milana Trounce, MD, a clinical associate professor of emergency medicine, wants to get people to worry about this possibility. For the fourth year in a row, she is presiding over a course called Biosecurity and Bioterrorism Response, which aims to get students thinking about how to prevent bioterror and, in the event of a biological attack, what to do about it. More than 100 Stanford undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral and professional students, representing disciplines ranging from public policy to biological science to engineering and bioengineering, have enrolled.

... "The advent of modern molecular genetic technologies is making it increasingly feasible to engineer bioweapons," said Block, who is also the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Sciences and a guest lecturer in Trounce's class. "It's making people with even moderate skills able to create threats they couldn't before."

A natural anthrax strain mailed to public officials in a series of homegrown terrorist incidents in late 2001—while deadly—was treatable, Block said. But the technology for making drug-resistant anthrax—or, for that matter, creating all manner of novel "designer diseases"—is becoming increasingly available worldwide, not to mention cheaper and more sophisticated.

Trounce agrees. "We are undergoing a biotechnology revolution," she said. "Even in the last 10 years, science has advanced so much that you can engineer some of the scariest organisms—for example, smallpox."
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')i]In laboratory experiments, scientists have mutated H5N1—a deadly influenza strain that so far has been transmitted to humans only by birds—to become transmissible by other humans. They have synthesized the Spanish flu virus, a naturally occurring strain that swept the globe in a 1918 pandemic, killing far more people than died in all the battles of World War I. What if any of those were to get out of the lab?