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Don’t you think banning an extremely common product in response to one study is an overreaction? From the article: >"To our knowledge this was the first time a

Don’t you think banning an extremely common product in response to one study is an overreaction? From the article: >"To our knowledge this was the first time anyone had shown hospital bacteria becoming tolerant to alcohols," says Timothy Stinear, a coauthor of the study and a researcher at the University of Melbourne's Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity.

joe_the_user 8y ago
Not really, I think there's a broad consensus that excessive disinfecting across society now has negative rather than positive effects. Bacteria can plausibly develop resistance to just about anything so gratuitously adding antibacterials to the environment is pretty inherently bad - use them when and only when needed (antibiotics in meat being another problem example). Also, it seems there's a threshold below which a lack-of-exposure to bacteria and other immune-vectors is actually bad for a person - by preventing the immune system from acting normally.
- BoiledCabbage 8y ago
  It's funny, because I remember have arguments with biology majors. And them explaining how alcohol is different and bacteria will never be able to evolve immunity to it unlike anti-biotics. Something I couldn't understand. And they kept trying to describe how it's different, and something about how any bacterium that evolved to survive in an high alcohol environment would no longer be able to survive in a non-alcohol environment. So they would die, just laying on the ground or any surface. I still never got it. Bio majors, is thete any truth to that? This article seems to say no. What phenomena could they have been referring to?
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Well, There's understanding what has been experimentally determined so-far about bacteria and organisms and there's understanding that the realm of things we haven't so-far discovered about organisms and their potential evolutions may larger than what we have discovered.
    - jorvi 8y ago
      All this talk makes me think of the 'unkillable' T1 phage. Just a tidbit copied from the internet[1]: 'T1 is not easy to get rid off. The best solution of all is to not use T1-sensitive strains. You’ll need to bleach the hell out of everything as well as UV irradiate if possible. And I mean everything, water baths, glassware, specs, pipets, your wife and kids (the latter is probably deserving of a good bleaching anyways). This is serious business T1 can exist in aerosol form for up to a few months, so it’s going to take regular cleaning and testing intervals. In a previous lab it took about six months to a year of solid effort to eradicate our T1 infection.' [1]http://genrepair.scientopia.org/2011/01/11/do-we-have-a-t1-problem/ http://genrepair.scientopia.org/2011/01/11/do-we-have-a-t1-p...

joe_the_user 8y ago

Not really, I think there's a broad consensus that excessive disinfecting across society now has negative rather than positive effects. Bacteria can plausibly develop resistance to just about anything so gratuitously adding antibacterials to the environment is pretty inherently bad - use them when and only when needed (antibiotics in meat being another problem example). Also, it seems there's a threshold below which a lack-of-exposure to bacteria and other immune-vectors is actually bad for a person - by preventing the immune system from acting normally.

BoiledCabbage 8y ago
It's funny, because I remember have arguments with biology majors. And them explaining how alcohol is different and bacteria will never be able to evolve immunity to it unlike anti-biotics. Something I couldn't understand. And they kept trying to describe how it's different, and something about how any bacterium that evolved to survive in an high alcohol environment would no longer be able to survive in a non-alcohol environment. So they would die, just laying on the ground or any surface. I still never got it. Bio majors, is thete any truth to that? This article seems to say no. What phenomena could they have been referring to?
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Well, There's understanding what has been experimentally determined so-far about bacteria and organisms and there's understanding that the realm of things we haven't so-far discovered about organisms and their potential evolutions may larger than what we have discovered.
  - jorvi 8y ago
    All this talk makes me think of the 'unkillable' T1 phage. Just a tidbit copied from the internet[1]: 'T1 is not easy to get rid off. The best solution of all is to not use T1-sensitive strains. You’ll need to bleach the hell out of everything as well as UV irradiate if possible. And I mean everything, water baths, glassware, specs, pipets, your wife and kids (the latter is probably deserving of a good bleaching anyways). This is serious business T1 can exist in aerosol form for up to a few months, so it’s going to take regular cleaning and testing intervals. In a previous lab it took about six months to a year of solid effort to eradicate our T1 infection.' [1]http://genrepair.scientopia.org/2011/01/11/do-we-have-a-t1-problem/ http://genrepair.scientopia.org/2011/01/11/do-we-have-a-t1-p...