I hate fear-mongering.
I do NOT believe we will all perish in a bacterial pandemic.
I do think this is worth noting.
My notes on this: MRSA and other resistant bacteria are not new but our options are running out. The total number killed by them is statistically small, but no one wants to be a statistic. Good hygiene and quick response can often help avoid many infections. This includes washing cuts with soap when they happen, and not picking at them (try telling that to your two year old).
And if anyone who develops drugs is listening: Emperor Penguins use something OTHER than their immune system to keep fish in their stomach from going bad while they walk it inland to feed their mates and offspring. No one, to my knowledge, has bothered to look at what that something is. It might be a quick rout to a new antibiotic. Along those same lines, many sea birds carry food long distances in their stomachs for their offspring to eat. Looking at the longest distance carriers might give more clues to other or related methods of avoiding spoilage.
Can anything stop the superbug?
MRSA is already notorious for killing the elderly and frail. But now a new form of the 'hospital superbug' is spreading through our parks and playgrounds. You can catch it with a single scratch, and the drugs that used to hold out some hope are rapidly becoming useless. Sarah Boseley reports
Wednesday January 17, 2007
Children gash their legs and graze their elbows. It's normal. Usually they recover incredibly fast. Occasionally, if the wound starts to look a little dodgy, they may be given an antibiotic - just in case it's infected. But in Texas, increasing numbers of healthy kids with the ordinary childhood lacerations from falling out of trees or being pushed over in the playground are being admitted to hospital. And some of them never make it home.
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