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The knock on effects of biologically active synthetic products are plainly not yet predictable. Current test and assessment abilities only establish a tenuous "
by strainer 8y ago
The knock on effects of biologically active synthetic products are plainly not yet predictable. Current test and assessment abilities only establish a tenuous "not guilty yet" legislative status.
How long is it taking to acknowledge that even a relatively inactive material - plastics - produced without restraint, can devastate ocean life and lead to who knows what destruction or disease, when some tiny little marvels eventually adapt to eat them ?
We must prioritise employment of natural materials simply and plainly because they are less disruptive to biology and more predictable by the knowledge and observation of their fitness in natural systems and natural history.
Of all our industries mass agriculture should be the most careful and symbiotic with environment and biology. Medicine, quarantined lab research, and exceptional problem cases - this is where novel materials and processes belong. Not sprayed across millions of acres and in our loved ones bellies.
- RebuildTheWheel 8y ago100% agreed and well said.
- WalterSear 8y agoI agree with you entirely. Fwiw, however, the top reddit commentor feels that this specific paper is bullshit science: So, i'm currently reading through the paper (and i'll leave comments where appropriate), but the immediate thing I noticed when reading through the Methods section is that one of the antibiotics they used as a general comparator is ciprofloxacin (Cip), which is also a herbicide. It's a dual herbicide/antibiotic, as it inhibits DNA gyrase activity in both plants and bacteria (we use it fairly often in our plant lab as a growth inhibitor). I feel like, if not controlled for, this could mess with their results. Edit: Whoa, that's a bit strange. In their Culturing Conditions section, they state they only used Cip with the bacteria and not the other antibiotics. That is definitely going to mess with your results. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/9nivyf/a_new_study_finds_that_bacteria_develop/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/9nivyf/a_new_study...
- strainer 8y agoThe comment drops a 'pro tip' that they use ciproflaxin in their plant lab as a growth inhibitor - writes confused criticisms of a study warning of antibiotic resistance accelerated by synergies with common herbicides - its beyond irony really. The CIP only experiment was conducted to test a separate hypothesis and clearly sub sectioned: " Herbicide-induced changes in MSC can occur without a change in MIC .... To test this, we measured the frequency at which acquired ciprofloxacin resistance arose during culture in the combination of Cip + Kamba + E. coli " Its no coincidence that various antibiotics have herbicidal qualities - the study is conducted to gain some information on potential interplay of these classes of substance.