An antiquated system and poor management in China may have created a potentially disastrous epidemic for the world: a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis. A combination of poor testing and treatment appears to have created both a multidrug-resistant or MDR tuberculosis. Of million TB patients, 110,000 now have MDR TB.
The article below suggests that the Chinese made poor decisions on detection and treatment for patients that led to the creation of the MDR TB.
Now there is evidence of a Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) that can be passed from patient to patient. Few Americans remember when TB hospitals were common sights and TB was viewed as a leading cause of death in the country and around the world.
The lack of transparency and freedom of the press in China only serves to worsen this problem. In the West, the failure of the government in dealing with the problem would be the focus of extensive reporting. However, China routinely quashes stories that are critical of government officials. This is particularly harmful because such articles can educate people that they need to finish drug treatments — one of the causes for the epidemic.
Many of us have complained that our government is not prioritizing this threat of the resistance to antibiotics and the threat of a pandemic. We have our own dysfunctional political system that is willing to pump hundreds of billions into two wars but relatively little in combatting the coming pandemic. Science and environmental budgets are being slashed while we continue to gush money in Iraq and Afghanistan. History may record that we were all a ship of fools sailing blissfully toward the new pandemic in the 21st Century.
Source: NPR
Thank you James Bradley for correcting the enormous derp in the thread.
Bron, if you do not have any of the indications the CDC lists for people that should not be vaccinated, consider getting vaccinated. If you get flu, you will probably be fine, but the people you might pass it on to while you are contagious may not be.
James Bradley,
Please explain the following. Many of us have TB dormant somewhere in our bodies It survives and we do. How is that? And what immune reductions other that HIV would encourage an outbreak?
Of course non-linear ones are in our daily life. We just don’t recognize them or understand them.
A slowly warmed pot of water will do for a start. It is even self-organizing. Fancy that. No computing power needed at all. Jst nature doing what comes naturally.
Dredd,
Mutation, ie evolution does not mean progress, ie survival increase.
Rapidly changing environmental factors cause species extinction.
I’d wager that when we get the arable land all under monoculture and under RoundUp will be the tipping point.
However any other perturbations in the meanwhile can do it as well as the above can. This could be a warm threshold passed, a toxification effect, or a number of other factors you could cite.
The environment is not a linear system. But non-linear
effects don’t appear in our daily live, and thus we don’t even know that they exist. 99.99% anyway.
Drug resistant TB comes from poor treatment regimens or by stopping the drug regimen before the bacteria are killed (treatment lasts 9-12 months). Standard treatment drugs come from the group “RIPE”: rifampin, isoniazid, pyrazinamide, ethambutol. In the U.S., if necessary, we institute direct observation of drug therapy to ensure treatment is completed. 4% of XDR TB cases worldwide are here in the U.S. Drug resistant TB is a particular problem with patients that are immunosuppressed (such as those on chemotherapy) or immunocompromised (such as those that have HIV). Note that MDR TB (multiple drug resistant TB) is also a significant problem. More information at the American Lung Association: http://www.lung.org/lung-disease/tuberculosis/factsheets/multidrug-resistant.html
@Otteray Scribe
About 80% of antibiotics sold in the US are used in agriculture. This is the greatest threat for the emergence of drug-resistant infectious disease (next to hospitals themselves).
The reason is not so much to speed up animal growth, but largely because of 1) close quarters associated with factory farming and 2) modern livestock feed.
Salmonela and e. coli were not major problems in the food industry until we started force-feeding corn to livestock. Cattle, for example, evolved to eat grass. When we feed them so much corn, it increases the amount of sugars in their digestive tract, which proves to be a breeding ground for bacteria. Hence the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in livestock.
It’s difficult to understate the danger this poses. Over the last 100 years, the increase in life expectancy per medical research dollar spent has been plummeting. It’s a typical diminishing returns curve.
In the past 500 odd years, three things have done more than anything else to improve medical care: the introduction of hygiene by Paracelsus, the development of antibiotics (penicillin was developed for around $20,000), and the vaccine. Almost everything else has been of marginal utility (and increasingly costly).
idealist707 1, June 8, 2012 at 10:18 am
…. When do we pull the plug and we all go down the drain? …
===============================
Very relevant question.
There is a paper in Nature revealing data which indicates that we have known for some time that local ecosystems can reach a “tipping point” where all bets are off as to what happens next, but now the data indicate that the entire global ecosystem has the same characteristics.
That is, there is a time when “the plug” can be pulled and all bets are off as to what happens next, except that we can bet that “what happens next” won’t be good for any of us.
Interesting and worthwhile all.
Dredd, whether this is “thinking” is one thing, but they do warn each other of attacks, of their territorial areas, and have “memories”. Long ones appropriately.
Drugs and their metabolites entering the environment and specifically water are matters of great concern. And a
subject which is officially monitored by a multi-discipline group at the FDA.
It is of continuous concern in Sweden due to re-cycling of potable water, and the Baltic being a fish resource.
Mercury, while not a drug, is a waste product of paper
production which has eliminated most large lakes as fish resources.
The ecosystem being interlinked, it is difficult to foresee the results of pollutants. Disturbing natural relationships, one of the things which Roundup threatens us with, can lead to surges in development of new organisms and in promotion of certain biotic organisms which effectively makes the water no longer potable, until sanitation is successful.
When do we pull the plug and we all go down the drain?
Multi-resistand or metacillin resistance–whicb is correct? Probablly both. But a mattter of concern to all, when do we pay big time is the question. And can we find agents whose effects can not be countered by mutations?
The last question is whether one case of a MDR is less dangerous than 500,000 cases in China? It is survival of the bacterla and its spreading that determine the importance.
Outbreak in CDC’s “backyard”. This one is “E.Coli 0145”. The cause has not yet been determined.
Gene H. 1, June 8, 2012 at 7:37 am
Dredd,
Since you put “educates” in quotes, I can agree with that statement. It’s the pill culture created by drug advertising and pure laziness dominating health care that I blame. Personally, I take antibiotics only when there is no other other option. If its something I either medicate or therapeutically address the symptoms and ride it out, I’ll do it.
====================================
There is that fine line between anthropomorphic activity ascribing human activity to microbes, and not doing it because of bias. In other words to say that some fauna think, but it is not human thinking, is one thing, but yet another to say only humans think.
One is utterly dismissive, the other is conditional and specific.
A case in point:
(Scientific American, “Do Plants Think?”). At any rate, we know that microbes can alter their behavior based upon what is taking place around them, because they can sense and recognize factors around them.
As JT said “We have our own dysfunctional political system that is willing to pump hundreds of billions into two wars but relatively little in combatting the coming pandemic.”
I read a paper and an article earlier today which indicates that American cognition is highly resistant to scientific progress, even when “treated” with education.
“The same is happening here, although I dont know if the concentrations are high enough to change fish sex.”
I don’t know about fish either, but I have seen reports of it happening here in amphibians (they are generally more sensitive to water quality than fish).
Otteray Scribe:
In England birth control hormones are causing the fish in streams to change sex. The same is happening here, although I dont know if the concentrations are high enough to change fish sex.
“The fertility of a generation of men is being put at risk because a hormone found in the Pill is getting into drinking water, scientists fear.
Pollution due to the chemical, a powerful form of oestrogen, is causing up to half the male fish in our lowland rivers to change sex, research shows.
Experts believe the hormone could be getting into drinking water and affecting men’s sperm counts. They say sewage treatment does not remove the chemical entirely from drinking supplies, although the water industry insists there is no evidence of a risk to health.
A study to be published by the Environment Agency later this month says entire fish stocks in some stretches of water are irreversibly affected. Scientists believe the synthetic oestrogen can feminise-fish at levels as low as one part per billion.
Professor Charles Tyler, one of the leaders of the research, told BBC1’s Countryfile: ‘Some of the concentrations where we are seeing effects on fish are below the detection limit in place for testing our drinking water. So we cannot be sure that some of these compounds aren’t getting into our drinking water.'”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-105466/Fertility-timebomb-drinking-water.html#ixzz1xCjT1W7c
Enjoy that next glass of “high quality” H2O.
Gene, I recall reading somewhere that medications are finding their way into our water supply. We already knew they were in the food chain because of farmers using antibiotics and other drugs to speed up animal growth.
Anyway, I read that the presence of many drugs, including psychiatric medications, are almost impossible to get rid of in waste water treatment facilities. That means the “cleaned” water released back into the environment by waste water operations still has all kinds of medications in it.
I have no idea what the long term effects might be, but it cannot be positive in the long run. On the other hand, areas where lithium (a naturally occurring mineral salt) is in the ground water have a lower per capita incidence of mental health problems than areas where there is no lithium in the water.
Air travel is an epidemiological nightmare waiting to happen, Bron, but what can be done to put that genie back in the bottle? I suspect very little.
Gene H:
good point, that is why I dont take antibiotics except as a last measure. And I usually dont get a flu shot.
and they are traveling all over the world.
In addition to MDR and DR infections developing because of over prescribing A/B’s, I wonder if there have been any studies to see what effects that has (if any) on weakening the human immune system? It seems logical that too much aid to the immune system could negatively impact its innate function.
Dredd,
Since you put “educates” in quotes, I can agree with that statement. It’s the pill culture created by drug advertising and pure laziness dominating health care that I blame. Personally, I take antibiotics only when there is no other other option. If its something I either medicate or therapeutically address the symptoms and ride it out, I’ll do it.
“Now there is evidence of a Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) that can be passed from patient to patient.”
This is usually caused by overuse of drugs which “educates” the virus or bacteria about how the drug works.
First in health care…. I am sure not…. I am curious why they allowed this to be reported…..