WHO says world poised for 'post-antibiotic' era

[Godfather]

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.17015.1398876098!/image/1.15135_MRSA_900pix.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/1.15135_MRSA_900pix.jpg


The 'post-antibiotic' era is near, according to a report released today by the World Health Organization (WHO). The decreasing effectiveness of antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents is a global problem, and a surveillance system should be established to monitor it, the group says.


There is nothing hopeful in the WHO's report, which pulls together data from 129 member states to show extensive resistance to antimicrobial agents in every region of the world. Overuse of antibiotics in agriculture — to promote livestock growth — and in hospitals quickly leads to proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria, which then spread via human travel and poor sanitation practices.

“A post-antibiotic era — in which common infections and minor injuries can kill — far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the twenty-first century,” writes Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general for health security, in a foreword to the report.

Perhaps the most worrying trend is the spread of resistance to carbapenems, the 'antibiotics of last resort', says Timothy Walsh, a medical microbiologist at Cardiff University, UK, who was an adviser for the report. “That’s taken us by surprise,” he says. “All of us are rather like rabbits in front of the headlights in how quickly this has taken off.”

The report finds that, in some areas of the world, more than half the infections caused by one major category of bacteria — Gram-negative, which includes Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae — involve species resistant to carbapenem drugs.

There are few if any replacements for carbapenems in development, says Elizabeth Jungman, director of drug safety and innovation at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington DC. Companies lack economic incentives to develop new antibiotics, she says, and researchers have found it difficult to find new ways to get Gram-negative bacteria to take up antibiotics.

Ultimately, the report's most surprising finding may be the lack of global data on antimicrobial resistance. “Despite the fact we've known the potential of this going cataclysmic for ten years, as a global unit we haven't managed to get our act together,” says Walsh. Just 22 of the 129 WHO member states that contributed to the report had data on the nine antibiotic–bacteria pairs of greatest concern.

Although the report calls for the establishment of a global monitoring network, it is unlikely that any extra money is forthcoming. “It’s a huge problem and I'm not sure the resources are available,” says Keith Klugman, an epidemiologist at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington.

[Godfather]

This does scare me. If we lose antibiotics and find no alternative - we lose most other medical advances in the last century and a half. No antibiotics would make the following a reality: No surgery (infection rates skyrocket), no limb salvage after open fracture (you would have to go back to amputation), deaths from immuno-suppressed patients would skyrocket (e.g.Cancer patients, autoimmune disease patients). Just to name a few. There are already dystopian novels being written about the post-antibiotic world.

[DemonGeminiX]

I guess this will either kill us or usher in a new era of evolution, where our immune systems adapt to the increasing threats.

There's too many people on this planet anyway.

[Godfather]

I guess this will either kill us or usher in a new era of evolution, where our immune systems adapt to the increasing threats.


Our immune systems could never do that before anti-biotics though. Is there reason to believe that would change after them? I would guess that there will always be bugs our bodies cannot naturally fight off. That's the beauty of anti-bionics currently. It makes open surgeries and surviving flesh wounds possible where it wasn't for tens of thousands of years when people just died in their 40's. It would be back to the times of women dying of infection after giving birth, and a compound fracture resulting in amputation. That would suck.

Phage therapy/Bacteriophages is what we really need to cross our fingers for. Apparently it's somewhat promising...

[DemonGeminiX]

Sure it could. Do you think in our 100,000-1,000,000 or so years of human existence, that bacteria, fungi, and viruses were always static? No, they all evolved right along side of us, and our bodies had to learn to adapt without modern medicine. Sure, there's some nasty shit out there that'll dissolve our flesh to bone, but given enough time and incremental exposure, we'll adapt. Or we'll die.

Sure, modern medicine has helped us live longer and survive better, but it's relatively new in our existence. How do you suppose we survived as long as we have before modern medicine was developed (only fairly recently)?

Modern medicine advances, adaptation, we'll figure it out. Then we'll weaponize it and drop it on the Middle East and China.

[Godfather]

How do you suppose we survived as long as we have before modern medicine was developed (only fairly recently)?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not really concerned about the survival of the human race, that's a little extreme. We've adapted to a lot of hardships. It's the quality of life that I am concerned could diminish within my lifetime (more so in the developed world) if this became a reality. Only modern medicine in the last 100 years has improved life so drastically and rapidly, and losing anti-biotics could crush a lot of it and make living just generally a lot shittier and a lot shorter.

[DemonGeminiX]

If the quality of life takes a nosedive, you're gonna become more concerned with survival whether you are now or not...

The wheels of the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round...

Life's a cycle, man. There's ups and downs. But everything comes round full circle. You gotta go through bad times to get to the good ones. It's pretty much the same through all aspects and facets of life. If it's our time to fall, then so be it. Eventually, we'll get back up again, or the apes will take over and Charlton Heston will be screaming at them to take their damn dirty paws off of him...

[Godfather]

True enough, we shall see. I hope my lifetime still sees humanity on the upswing.


Bit off topic now but one of my buddies was telling me about an author/historian who hypothesized that if our current society collapses like the Romans or the Greek or worse - humanity doesn't have many (if not zero) more kicks at the can for do-overs on this Earth to get back to where we're at now. The main reason is how advanced mining and mineral engineering and the like have had to become because we've already scraped the easy resources from the Earth and have to use modern technology now to access most metals, minerals, oil, etc. The key to early societies starting up and thriving is having easy access to raw materials and resources. If we have pillaged most of the readily accessible stuff and now rely on superior technologies, how is that going to continue if you start from scratch a thousand years down the line? If we go down and take that with us, other than recycling the useable waste we leave behind it's going to be very hard for future inhabitants to be able to do what we've done.

Could just be hokum but it's food for thought. Thoughts on that one?

[Lambchop]

I think simpler organisms will always outlive us in the long term. Some can withstand high levels of ionizing radiation, bleach, extreme temperature changes, Obamacare, etc. We are weak as shit in comparison.

Our last resort antibiotics are so shit that they can actually kill you along with the target bacterium.

The research/pharmaceutical field is riddled with corruption and manipulated data, so we are fucked either way.

Realistically, any real breakthrough in medicine will be limited to ensure population control and continued funding.

[DemonGeminiX]

True enough, we shall see. I hope my lifetime still sees humanity on the upswing.


Bit off topic now but one of my buddies was telling me about an author/historian who hypothesized that if our current society collapses like the Romans or the Greek or worse - humanity doesn't have many (if not zero) more kicks at the can for do-overs on this Earth to get back to where we're at now. The main reason is how advanced mining and mineral engineering and the like have had to become because we've already scraped the easy resources from the Earth and have to use modern technology now to access most metals, minerals, oil, etc. The key to early societies starting up and thriving is having easy access to raw materials and resources. If we have pillaged most of the readily accessible stuff and now rely on superior technologies, how is that going to continue if you start from scratch a thousand years down the line? If we go down and take that with us, other than recycling the useable waste we leave behind it's going to be very hard for future inhabitants to be able to do what we've done.

Could just be hokum but it's food for thought. Thoughts on that one?

If we're on our last hurrah currently, then yeah, we're fucked. There would have to be a surge of reclamation and recycling and recycled shit isn't usually as good as the original product. But if we can get that push to interplanetary travel, we'd have new planets/moons/asteroids to explore and mine for resources. Hell, if we can't inhabit them, then we can certainly figure out how to get the resources we need off of them, or learn to use to our benefit the natural resources they have. We just need to last long enough to be able to get off this rock.

[Hal-9000]

I think simpler organisms will always outlive us in the long term. Some can withstand high levels of ionizing radiation, bleach, extreme temperature changes, Obamacare, etc. We are weak as shit in comparison.

Our last resort antibiotics are so shit that they can actually kill you along with the target bacterium.

The research/pharmaceutical field is riddled with corruption and manipulated data, so we are fucked either way.

Realistically, any real breakthrough in medicine will be limited to ensure population control and continued funding.

Like GF says, we rely on antibiotics for a variety of modalities...I believe this next phase pf evolution will cull a large number of people from our planet. And the members of the invisible villages and tribes who've never had contact with western medicine, will either succumb to something as common as a cold, or rise up and be the new landlords of the planet.