11 ms·

When We Lose Antibiotics, Here's Everything Else We'll Lose Too

273 points by jcklnruns 13y ago

kephra 13y ago
> Without the drugs that keep livestock healthy in concentrated agriculture, we’d lose the ability to raise them that way. Antibiotics for industrial animal farms are one of the reasons bacteria develop multiple resistances. One should ban antibiotics for animals world wide. Unfortunate this wont happen, till its to late. "The sheep look up" holds still true.
- grecy 13y ago
  While I tend to agree with you, the problem is we'll then have a lot less livestock to eat, and there will be a global food shortage. The house of cards is stacked very, very high.
  - rosser 13y ago
    If even some of the land that was freed up by a fall-off in livestock production was instead used to grow plants, we'd actually have a food surplus, and a significant one. EDIT: "even some of"
    - SwellJoe 13y ago
      Not to mention we'd reduce water usage dramatically in a lot of places where water use is one of the most pressing issues people face.
      - bobbydavid 13y ago
        And don't forget air quality! Cow farts are a leading cause of greenhouse gases. Seriously.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - colechristensen 13y ago
      Many places which are unsuitable to crop production can be used for livestock production with very wide grazing. Most livestock production is done in hyper-concentrated confinement operations which take up negligible land space. For the wellbeing of the animals, the quality of the environment surrounding these sites, and the quality of the meat -- these confinement operations should be done away with. The space, though, is irrelevant. Eliminating livestock production increases food availability because the feed-conversion-ratio is between 4 and 40 (how many pounds of feed turn into 1 pound of cow,pig,chicken, etc). It is certainly not about space.
      - geoka9 13y ago
        What about the space required to grow food for livestock?
        seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        Livestock can utilize food sources that we can't (pigs are the greatest food recyclers ever created), and they can graze in wastelands that we otherwise find difficult to make productive. India is primarily vegetarian ONLY because they have lots of land in which to grow things. Most other regions do not have so much grow-worthy land, and require a mix of farming and livestock to sustain their populations.
        maxerickson 13y ago
        The U.S. devotes 80 million acres to corn production, corn that is mostly used as animal feed: http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx (ethanol has shifted that mostly some, yay!)
        randomdata 13y ago
        That doesn't mean those 80 million acres are able to grow food humans can eat though. Not every year. For instance, on my farm, while our soil and climate is quite good for growing beans of many varieties, which are great for human consumption, you still need to maintain a rotation to maintain a viable farm. We've had to push cereals out of some of our land because it simply won't grow on their soils. That basically leaves corn as our only real rotation option. To add to that, corn is essentially worthless right now. Its market price is below what it costs to grow. I'd rather grow something I can make money from, but I don't know what that is. You just have to roll the dice and hope the price improves before you have to sell it. As an interesting aside, a neighbour of mine actually did try growing beans year after year, but he soon found himself out of business completely when disease started running rampant and his yields dropped to nothing. It was kind of sad to watch, and frightening to think what could be if we lose the animal markets.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      We already have a food surplus.
  - wwweston 13y ago
    > we'll then have a lot less livestock to eat Even if that's true, while meat is tasty, it's a luxury, and arguably a step in the food chain that's a waste. If the entire industrial meat sector evaporated today, my guess is the biggest impact would be an economic disruption from large number of suddenly unemployed and businesses no longer buying services/products, rather than any kind of food shortage per se. But if we're talking about an antibiotic ban, the impacts wouldn't even reach that far. ABX don't enable production, they enable cheaper production. The most likely outcome isn't a serious collapse in supply, it's some combination of an increase in costs and modest reduction in supply.
    - baddox 13y ago
      > Even if that's true, while meat is tasty, it's a luxury No more a luxury than, say, cancer treatments.
      - rosser 13y ago
        If you don't get your cancer treated, you die. If you don't eat meat, you don't eat meat.
        seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        If you live in Tibet or any other 4000+ meter environment where growing things is quite a bit more difficult, and you don't eat meat, you die. Say whatever you want about the Chinese, but the Tibetans do very much welcome the fresh vegetables that they can now get via better transport links and internal trade. I visited north Xinjiang once, and was quite over-exposed to meat so much that I was happy to get back to lower elevation lands where I could actually get some vegetables again.
        gohrt 13y ago
        That's completely off-topic in a conversation that is obviously about large-scale ranches. Do those Tibetans use antibiotics to promote growth?
  - contingencies 13y ago
    Less cheap industrial meat in the overfed west (particularly the US) is not equal to global food shortage.
  - logicallee 13y ago
    pumping them full of antibiotics under factory farm conditions seems like an awful hack anyway. it's like running eighty concurrent webserver processes and killing them 100 times per second round-robin because if you don't kill them constantly they will bring down the whole system. I mean maybe this setup "works" but aren't we really stretching the definition of that word?
    - jff 13y ago
      > it's like running eighty concurrent webserver processes and killing them 100 times per second round-robin because if you don't kill them constantly they will bring down the whole system Ruby on Rails?
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      A significant portion of the drugs used in feed are used to tip the digestive chemistry so that the feed is processed more efficiently. It isn't that big an effect, but it isn't really wildly crazy. There's a bunch of studies on feeding ionophores to graze animals (which I take as a demonstration of intent).
  - edvinbesic 13y ago
    It all seems like a vicious cycle of us discovering better ways to fight bacteria and feeding more and more people at the same time at the same price or less. Everything adapts bla bla bla. This could all be alleviated if we just took a step back as a society and took control of our own lives, food included. Maybe spending 20-30 minutes a day on growing your own supply (where applicable) isn't the worst thing in the world if it came down to it.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      That's a very modest estimate of the time involved if you start talking about people growing a significant portion of the calories they need.
      - edvinbesic 13y ago
        Absolutely, but maybe there is more then one wrong here. Plus the nutrition you get from mass farming these days is less then desirable. It's not about quantity ,but quality as the cliche says. I understand this is not possible everywhere but I grew up on a pretty small suburban home that grew maybe 50% of its own vegetables outside of winter. Having moved to a heavy industrialized nation and moving that down to 0% I can see the difference in quality when eating mass produced food. Again, not everyone if willing or able to do this, but where applicable it should be encouraged and promoted instead of looked down upon as another hippy mentality blabedibla...
  - jrochkind1 13y ago
    So, which would you rather have, a lot less livestock to eat, or no way to treat bacterial infections? Oh, but guess what, you don't get to choose that trade-off -- you'll have a lot less livestock to eat either way. You can do it with or without entering the post-antibiotic era. (Or at any rate, a lot more expensive meat, which will likely result in a lot less of it, sure.) Fortunately, a lot less livestock to eat does not mean a global food shortage. People are quite capable of living with a lot less meat. It may be a global deliciousness shortage, because meat is delicious; but most people on the planet don't eat much meat already (cause they can't afford it). The OP is odd in suggesting "We have a few chances left to turn back the tide of resistance — but only a few, and not much room for mistakes. I hope we take them." -- without any hints as to what these chances are -- and then suggesting that if we don't take them, what we'll 'lose' is cheap meat from routine antibiotic use in livestock! But in fact, ceasing the use of routine antibiotics in livestock production -- before they become useless, because it'll be stopped when they become useless anyhow -- seems like the #1. What else you got?
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Erm. People have been eating meat on a regular, frequent basis only very recently in History. 60 years ago it was meat just one a month or something. And people didn't just die off because they couldn't eat meat anymore.
    - dnautics 13y ago
      That's simply not true. Inuit have almost exclusively eaten meat for centuries. And there are parts of the world where agriculture and irrigation don't work and animals which can feed on scrub are the staple.
      - ekianjo 13y ago
        Well, I was talking about Europe, mainly, and I assume in most countries of the developed word this was very much the same. I don't think Inuits have very much to do with the industrial production of meat we have nowadays, do they ?
      - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        Actually, I believe the Inuit don't practice animal husbandry either; they mainly get their food from the ocean (mostly as meat).
      - kayoone 13y ago
        It is, at least in Europe. Ask your grandparents and they will tell you that they maybe ate meat once a week
        circlefavshape 13y ago
        What? I'm Irish and my grandparents ate meat, fish or eggs pretty much every day of their lives
        kayoone 13y ago
        Well not in the post WW2 germany my grandparents lived in.
  - mistercow 13y ago
    It's pretty doubtful that a reduction in livestock would lead to a food shortage. The amount of resources it takes to produce a calorie of meat is vastly larger than to produce a calorie of plant-based food.
- contingencies 13y ago
  Unfortunately, you are right. Startup idea: cheap consumer-oriented broad spectrum antibiotic detection kits for meat and fish.
  - kephra 13y ago
    Thats a great idea. But how to apply this in supper market? You could only check it after buying, and slapping the so called bio-butcher, if he sells you antibiotic meat, with the meat he sold.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      It would enable an effective labeling program.
  - aaronbrethorst 13y ago
    Check for a lack of an organic certification label. The end.
    - smtddr 13y ago
      Well, you have to believe the USDA Organic label is actually being used correctly[1]. I say this as a USDA-Organic fan who tries his best to buy his family only things that carry that label. I'd buy a setup that allowed me to test my food; I thought about this awhile back[2]. 1. http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?template=TemplateN&topNav=&leftNav=NationalOrganicProgram&page=NOPFraudulentCertificates&description=NOP%20Fraudulent%20Certificates http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?tem... 2. https://twitter.com/SMTDDR/status/347885004606545920 https://twitter.com/SMTDDR/status/347885004606545920
- Angostura 13y ago
  Routine dosing is already banned in the EU
- tokenadult 13y ago
  One should ban antibiotics for animals world wide. I wouldn't go quite that far. I am on record here on HN as agreeing with a doctor who said in an interview, "Q: Do you think we have enough data to know what’s happening with the antibiotics used on the farm? "A: I think we know enough to say that we need to be doing a better job of improving appropriate use of antibiotics in all sectors, humans and animals. "Q: But the agriculture sector is different, because antibiotics have been used there for a long time with an eye toward improving the growth of the animals, really for food purposes, to make them bigger and fatter with less food. Does that concern you as a use? "A: Certainly the CDC believes quite firmly, and I think there are a number of veterinary experts here and in other places who agree with the stance that we should never be using antibiotics in agriculture or in people for any other purpose than to treat infections. "Using antibiotics to promote growth in animals is not a good use of antibiotics. It’s not careful use of this really delicate and invaluable resource."[1] I am also on record as saying, responding to a passage in another thread-opening article, >> "What Europe did: In the EU, all antibiotics used in human medicines are banned on farms—and no antibiotics can be used on farms for 'non-medical purposes,' i.e., growth promotion." << I'd like to see the United States follow that lead immediately, and I write this as a man who has several uncles and cousins who are farmers, including some who raise cattle. It makes sense to me to have lines of defense against transmission of animal-infecting, and especially antibiotic-resistant-animal-infecting, microbes to human beings, by controlling what animals raised as lifestock eat and how they are treated with veterinary medicines.[2] Animals get sick, both on and off the farm. Careful veterinary practice can enhance human health, by reducing sources of zoonotic infections. The epidemiologists who work to prevent human disease also keep track of news of animal infections on the farm and in the wild.[3] With this in mind, I can't agree with the policy idea One should ban antibiotics for animals world wide. expressed in the parent post. We should be careful about the use of antibiotics, many of which were originally "natural" substances emitted by microorganisms as a defense against other microorganisms, and we should use antibiotics mostly to treat cases of actual human or animal disease, and also use other infection control measures to prevent the spread of infectious diseases either to humans or to nonhuman animals, wherever they live. AFTER EDIT: Meanwhile, in human medicine, the development through natural selection of multiple-drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis is very alarming. I wish India were doing better in controlling tuberculosis. Both a newspaper in the United States, which did much to break the story,[4] and a newspaper from India[5] are in agreement with official sources from both countries[6][7] that much more needs to be done to stop the spread of drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis in India, which could threaten the health of the whole world. (A century and a half ago, tuberculosis was perhaps the world's leading cause of death.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6599795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6599795 (expressing agreement with the quoted expert in the thread-opening article) [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5674781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5674781 [3] http://www.cdc.gov/ncezid/ http://www.cdc.gov/ncezid/ http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/ http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/ [4] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303444204577460734274201756 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230344420... [5] http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news/40134749_1_stop-tb-department-mario-raviglione-jmm-meeting http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news... [6] http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of-Drug-Resistant-Tuberculosis-Challenges-and-Potential-Solutions-in-India.aspx http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of-Drug-R... [7] http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/pdfs/RNTCP%20Response%20DR%20TB%20in%20India%20-%20Jan%202012%20update.pdf http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/pdfs/RNTCP%20Response%20DR%20TB%2...
- sampo 13y ago
  > Antibiotics for industrial animal farms are one of the reasons bacteria develop multiple resistances. I have the impression (but haven't really checked any real sources on this) that the carefree use of antibiotics on farm animals is mostly an American thing. And that the use of antibiotics in animal farming is much more regulated in Europe. Don't know for sure, though. And don't know about the rest of the world.
  - kayoone 13y ago
    Certainly true. My dad is a veterinarian and said its quite heavily regulated in germany and possibly Europe
  - refurb 13y ago
    It would be interesting to see the incidence of multi-drug resistant bacteria in the US vs. the EU. Most people get MDR infections from other people, not from animals. I'm not saying animal to human infections don't occur, they obviously do, but it's not a major source of transmission.
  - drzaiusapelord 13y ago
    Antibiotics on the farm are banned in the EU for anything but treating infections. This seems to be a largely an American problem. The real problem is that American politics are broken and adding even sane common-sense regulation against a mountain of lobbyists and corrupt politicians is an uphill battle that usually ends in failure (patent reform bill recently) or various compromises that kill any chance of the bill being very effective (ACA). I think the US is a case study in how this level of "direct democracy" usually gets gamed by monied interests.
batbomb 13y ago
> If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance — and trust me, we’re not far off When did journalists become biomedical experts? I don't want to read a story about a serious subject that says "trust me".
- clinton_sf 13y ago
  For what it's worth, journalists can and do talk to subject experts. Whether they quote their sources in a casual non-scientific article for Wired magazine is another thing. For more info (e.g., of a journalist talking to doctors and such), take a look at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hunting-the-nightmare-bacteria/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hunting-the-nightmar...
  - dak1 13y ago
    In that case it would be better to write: > If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance — and many experts agree we may not be far off
    - MatmaRex 13y ago
      I'd say this would be worse. "many experts" is a weasel word, implying an authority behind the statement, but providing no proof of it. And "trust me" is at the least plain and honest.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  - refurb 13y ago
    The recent data I've seen suggests that level of multi-drug resistant infections has actually leveled off or dropped slightly. Is it a problem? Yes. Are we close to the end? No.
    - dd36 13y ago
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Of the many topics that seem to capture the attention most readily, tales of the apocalypse to come are perhaps the most compelling. For reasons I don't completely fathom, people gravitate toward stories of impending doom much more readily than stories of impending happiness. History shows that 'good' unexpected things happen just as frequently as 'bad' unexpected things happen, and consequently we get a lot of change but not necessarily all bad change or all good change. Still you can write a blog post that the economy is near the breaking point, our civilization is mere moments away from collapse, or that some calamity is on the verge of wiping us out, and get all the page views you can monetize.
- dicroce 13y ago
  Everything you said is true. But so is the fact that people are starting to die of things that just a few years ago were curable.
- shashwatak 13y ago
  This article isn't some "2012" doomsday nonsense. This is a real and pressing concern, indeed has been a concern for decades.
  - benihana 13y ago
    Just like the global food shortage that Malthusians assured us was bound to happen, the ozone layer fading away and UV rays destroying us all, Y2K breaking every computer on the planet. This time it's for real. This time, technology and human ingenuity isn't going to save us.
    - mildtrepidation 13y ago
      And whether this is "the big one" or not, with this attitude, we'll never be ready for anything that actually does go seriously wrong. "It hasn't happened before, so it can't happen now" makes for nothing but a great epitaph.
    - DennisP 13y ago
clinton_sf 13y ago
I suspect this problem will self-correct. It's not that we've run out of choices: it's partially that pharmaceutical companies had the narrow view that developing new antibiotic drugs is less profitable than developing drugs for chronic illness (e.g., to control cholesterol); once catastrophe hits due to bacteria being resistant to all current drugs, it will be extremely profitable to work on this class of drugs again. Take a look at this interview with Dr. John Rex M.D., (V.P., Clinical Research, AstraZeneca) [1] "Dr. JOHN REX: If you need an antibiotic, you need it only briefly. Indeed, that’s the— that’s the correct way to use an antibiotic. You use it only briefly. And from an economic standpoint of a developer, that means you’re not— you’re not getting the return on the investment you’ve made because you’ve spent between $600 million and a billion dollars to bring that new antibiotic to market." [1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-technology/hunting-the-nightmare-bacteria/transcript-51/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-techn...
- ProblemFactory 13y ago
  Most things in the world eventually self-correct. But before that happens, many people will be hurt and die in the process. For example, we could do away with CDC, FDA and building codes, and rely on Yelp customer reviews of drugs, restaurants and electrical contractors. Eventually the ones that kill people should get bad reviews and go out of business - but this won't help the first victims and their relatives.
  - acchow 13y ago
    Intriguing to think about. But what will probably happen is the lack of controls will allow for higher profits - the companies that kill people will have way more money to pay off Yelp to censor bad reviews.
    - Ygg2 13y ago
      True, but Yelp would lose all credibility, so it wouldn't be used to determine anything than dining out.
    - 13y ago
FollowSteph3 13y ago
Nothing we do on the human scale compares to the routine use of antibiotics on the agricultural scale, especially when it comes to animals...
ck2 13y ago
Holy hell, antibiotics are used on fruit? To be honest I was a bit smug because I don't eat meat. So much for that. Wow we are in trouble.
- spurgu 13y ago
  Me too, but apparently it's true. At least for the US. "Antibiotics can also be found in vegetables and fruits. The U.S. Department of Agriculture funded a study to test this. Scientists took manure from animals that were given antibiotics. They grew different plants in the manure and then tested its leaves. What they found was alarming: 1. The antibiotic was present in fruits, vegetables as well as the vegetable leaves. 2. The amount of antibiotic in the plant was directly related to the amount in the soil. 3. The plants absorbed antibiotics in the soil as it grew. 4. Crops that grow underground might absorb even more antibiotics from the soil. Examples of such crops include potatoes, radishes, and carrots." http://www.consumer-health.com/services/cons_take66.php http://www.consumer-health.com/services/cons_take66.php
  - Pxtl 13y ago
    And yet every time I mention my organic farm share all I get is condescension about what "snake-oil" organic farming is.
  - refurb 13y ago
    And how much was in the fruit? This reminds me of the "there are prescription drugs in our drinking water" alarmism. Are they in there? Sure, are present in an amount that is biologically active? No. We're talking picograms of drugs.
300bps 13y ago
When We Lose Antibiotics, Here’s Everything Else We’ll Lose Too Well I guess all hope is lost then. The title isn't, "If We Lose Antibiotics" after all. So why bring it up at all? There are no (ahem) prescriptions for fixing the problem in the article. Just a clear, terrifying outline of most of the bad things that are going to happen. And a plug for her book that presumably has the cure? I read the Amazon reviews of the book (currently 25) and there isn't much of a mention of what the purpose of reading the book is. In fact the main purpose of reading the book based on the reviews I read is that it is supposed to scare the bejesus out of you. Again, to what purpose? Should I be advocating against livestock use of antibiotics? Should I be advocating for tighter control of prescribing antibiotics? This could be the scariest thing in the world but honestly it seems more like sensationalist journalism and an attempt to sell a book than a call to serious action.
- andyjohnson0 13y ago
  You admit that the problem is real and serious, but then ask what is the point of raising the issue, and accuse the author of sensationalism? Really? Read the last three paragraphs of the article. The point of it and book (which was published almost three years ago) is to raise awareness of the issue. We are so close to the edge here that "scaring the bejesus" out of people might now be worth a try, since nothing else seems to be changing our behaviour?
  - 300bps 13y ago
    You seem to be so caught up in this issue that you just aren't listening. Here is my point spelled out again: There are two parts to a legitimate campaign to fix this. Educate people on the problem and educate people on the solution. Why does this article only focus on the problem and then have an advertisement for her book?
    - andyjohnson0 13y ago
      "Why does this article only focus on the problem" Because we already know what the solution is and it is described in numerous articles, books, papers and reports published over several decades. If you want to know what you should be advocating then read them. Please don't just say "So why bring it up at all?" This article is just about the consequences of failure to adopt a solution. There is no requirement that every work on antibiotic resistance has to adopt the problem/solution structure that you require.
Houshalter 13y ago
Aren't drug resistant bacteria weaker though? Like reproducing slower, spreading less, being more likely to be defeated by your own immune system? Also antibiotics would still be good against most bacteria since only some have evolved antibiotic resistance. I know they can sometimes spread to other species of bacteria, but they still would be at a disadvantage outside of places that use antibiotics. If you just got cut or something with random bacteria in it wouldn't you probably be ok?
- has2k1 13y ago
  On the whole, drug resistant bacteria will likely remain as capable in other characteristics. Due to the complex nature of DNA (specifically gene functions), genetic codes tends to be multipurpose. When select for any one attribute (e.g drug resistance) you could potentially affect zero or more other attributes. You just won't know which ones (based on today's bio-genetics understanding). So there is no reason to expect drug resistant bacteria to be weaker. You are right bacteria have proven very cable at appropriating useful DNA from across the species. Also, we can reasonably expect drug resistant bacteria to spread just like other bacteria spreads (i.e varied methods and levels of difficulty). Among the factors that affect the spread of bacteria is the mobility of the host. If a host dies in timely fashion the bacteria spreads less and if they linger around longer the opportunity to spread increases. Like other infectious pathogens, this is mainly species dependent. When a multitude of antibiotic resistant bacteria spread around sufficiently are a common stay in the ether then they become part of the random bacteria that would likely infect if you just got a cut.
- chalst 13y ago
  I don't we can make exactly this generalisation, but certainly from the existence of superbugs responsible for one disease it follows 1. neither that those superbugs will come to dominate the bacteria responsible for that disease (superbugs might never be strong outside the hospital, say) 2. nor that superbugs will emerge for many other diseases. She's painting a worst-case scenario, which has a consciousness-raising value, but no one should be saying that doom is upon us.
riggins 13y ago
bring on the cricket protein powder
jotm 13y ago
Well, I've yet to use antibiotics, and I hope I never have to. The only time I've been given some was after a minor surgery.
encephalogram 13y ago
Mass hysteria and fear mongering, in the name of book sales. Blah, blah, blah. I'm not worried. I believe engineering can solve whatever microbiology and pharmaceuticals can't. But in the spirit of the article... FLEE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!!!
smegel 13y ago
Are we really going to care that heart surgery is no longer viable when deadly pandemics are spreading around the world killing percentiles of the population?
josefresco 13y ago
If you're interested on antibiotics there's a good Frontline piece on "gram negatives". http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/10/frontline-asks-has-the-age-of-antibiotics-come-to-an-end.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/10/frontline-asks-h... Their point was that it's not "when" we reach this point ... we already have.
pgreenwood 13y ago
There's considerable promise in phage therapies as an alternative to antibiotics. And they may well not suffer the same problems of resistance since phages are targeted to specific bacteria.
- dd36 13y ago
  Why would that prevent evolution any differently?
  - pgreenwood 13y ago
    Bacterial antibiotic resistance increases with exposure to the antibiotic. With targeted treatment there is less exposure for a given clinical effect. Therefore lower resistance.
nlvd 13y ago
Is this happening actually a bad thing? With vast over population about to occur, it seems like this might be a natural solution to a difficult problem. If all the sick people start dying again as would have originally happened things like plagues/wars will be considerably more devastating.
- mnarayan01 13y ago
  Are you seriously asking whether people dying earlier is a bad thing?
  - nlvd 13y ago
    Yes.
estebank 13y ago
I see a lot of people here dismissing this as a non-problem because it wouldn't be of apocalyptic proportions. I don't think anybody with two brain cells to rub together would say losing antibiotics would be an extinction event, that's not the point. The point is that infections will likely become the number one killer, it already is number two[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...
wil421 13y ago
This article is talking as if all bacteria would suddenly become resistant to everything. I doubt it would be so sudden are more of a gradual decline.
jkbyc 13y ago
There is a nice simulation game where the goal is to kill all of humanity by evolving a disease: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miniclip.plagueinc https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miniclip.p... You can learn a thing or two about the problem space just by playing the game.
phryk 13y ago
> Tattoos. This triggered my FUD detector.
kornork 13y ago
I would love to know the current status of using viruses (bacteriophages) to replace antibiotics. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/409905/using-viruses-to-kill-bacteria/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/409905/using-viruses-to...
sn0v 13y ago
Unfortunately, by the time there are enough regulations regarding the use of antibiotics (for livestock and agriculture) worldwide, it might just be too late.

273 points by jcklnruns 13y ago

> Without the drugs that keep livestock healthy in concentrated agriculture, we’d lose the ability to raise them that way. Antibiotics for industrial animal farms are one of the reasons bacteria develop multiple resistances. One should ban antibiotics for animals world wide. Unfortunate this wont happen, till its to late. "The sheep look up" holds still true.

grecy 13y ago
While I tend to agree with you, the problem is we'll then have a lot less livestock to eat, and there will be a global food shortage. The house of cards is stacked very, very high.
- rosser 13y ago
  If even some of the land that was freed up by a fall-off in livestock production was instead used to grow plants, we'd actually have a food surplus, and a significant one. EDIT: "even some of"
  - SwellJoe 13y ago
    Not to mention we'd reduce water usage dramatically in a lot of places where water use is one of the most pressing issues people face.
    - bobbydavid 13y ago
      And don't forget air quality! Cow farts are a leading cause of greenhouse gases. Seriously.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - colechristensen 13y ago
    Many places which are unsuitable to crop production can be used for livestock production with very wide grazing. Most livestock production is done in hyper-concentrated confinement operations which take up negligible land space. For the wellbeing of the animals, the quality of the environment surrounding these sites, and the quality of the meat -- these confinement operations should be done away with. The space, though, is irrelevant. Eliminating livestock production increases food availability because the feed-conversion-ratio is between 4 and 40 (how many pounds of feed turn into 1 pound of cow,pig,chicken, etc). It is certainly not about space.
    - geoka9 13y ago
      What about the space required to grow food for livestock?
      - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        Livestock can utilize food sources that we can't (pigs are the greatest food recyclers ever created), and they can graze in wastelands that we otherwise find difficult to make productive. India is primarily vegetarian ONLY because they have lots of land in which to grow things. Most other regions do not have so much grow-worthy land, and require a mix of farming and livestock to sustain their populations.
        maxerickson 13y ago
        The U.S. devotes 80 million acres to corn production, corn that is mostly used as animal feed: http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx (ethanol has shifted that mostly some, yay!)
        randomdata 13y ago
        That doesn't mean those 80 million acres are able to grow food humans can eat though. Not every year. For instance, on my farm, while our soil and climate is quite good for growing beans of many varieties, which are great for human consumption, you still need to maintain a rotation to maintain a viable farm. We've had to push cereals out of some of our land because it simply won't grow on their soils. That basically leaves corn as our only real rotation option. To add to that, corn is essentially worthless right now. Its market price is below what it costs to grow. I'd rather grow something I can make money from, but I don't know what that is. You just have to roll the dice and hope the price improves before you have to sell it. As an interesting aside, a neighbour of mine actually did try growing beans year after year, but he soon found himself out of business completely when disease started running rampant and his yields dropped to nothing. It was kind of sad to watch, and frightening to think what could be if we lose the animal markets.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    We already have a food surplus.
- wwweston 13y ago
  > we'll then have a lot less livestock to eat Even if that's true, while meat is tasty, it's a luxury, and arguably a step in the food chain that's a waste. If the entire industrial meat sector evaporated today, my guess is the biggest impact would be an economic disruption from large number of suddenly unemployed and businesses no longer buying services/products, rather than any kind of food shortage per se. But if we're talking about an antibiotic ban, the impacts wouldn't even reach that far. ABX don't enable production, they enable cheaper production. The most likely outcome isn't a serious collapse in supply, it's some combination of an increase in costs and modest reduction in supply.
  - baddox 13y ago
    > Even if that's true, while meat is tasty, it's a luxury No more a luxury than, say, cancer treatments.
    - rosser 13y ago
      If you don't get your cancer treated, you die. If you don't eat meat, you don't eat meat.
      - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        If you live in Tibet or any other 4000+ meter environment where growing things is quite a bit more difficult, and you don't eat meat, you die. Say whatever you want about the Chinese, but the Tibetans do very much welcome the fresh vegetables that they can now get via better transport links and internal trade. I visited north Xinjiang once, and was quite over-exposed to meat so much that I was happy to get back to lower elevation lands where I could actually get some vegetables again.
        gohrt 13y ago
        That's completely off-topic in a conversation that is obviously about large-scale ranches. Do those Tibetans use antibiotics to promote growth?
- contingencies 13y ago
  Less cheap industrial meat in the overfed west (particularly the US) is not equal to global food shortage.
- logicallee 13y ago
  pumping them full of antibiotics under factory farm conditions seems like an awful hack anyway. it's like running eighty concurrent webserver processes and killing them 100 times per second round-robin because if you don't kill them constantly they will bring down the whole system. I mean maybe this setup "works" but aren't we really stretching the definition of that word?
  - jff 13y ago
    > it's like running eighty concurrent webserver processes and killing them 100 times per second round-robin because if you don't kill them constantly they will bring down the whole system Ruby on Rails?
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    A significant portion of the drugs used in feed are used to tip the digestive chemistry so that the feed is processed more efficiently. It isn't that big an effect, but it isn't really wildly crazy. There's a bunch of studies on feeding ionophores to graze animals (which I take as a demonstration of intent).
- edvinbesic 13y ago
  It all seems like a vicious cycle of us discovering better ways to fight bacteria and feeding more and more people at the same time at the same price or less. Everything adapts bla bla bla. This could all be alleviated if we just took a step back as a society and took control of our own lives, food included. Maybe spending 20-30 minutes a day on growing your own supply (where applicable) isn't the worst thing in the world if it came down to it.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    That's a very modest estimate of the time involved if you start talking about people growing a significant portion of the calories they need.
    - edvinbesic 13y ago
      Absolutely, but maybe there is more then one wrong here. Plus the nutrition you get from mass farming these days is less then desirable. It's not about quantity ,but quality as the cliche says. I understand this is not possible everywhere but I grew up on a pretty small suburban home that grew maybe 50% of its own vegetables outside of winter. Having moved to a heavy industrialized nation and moving that down to 0% I can see the difference in quality when eating mass produced food. Again, not everyone if willing or able to do this, but where applicable it should be encouraged and promoted instead of looked down upon as another hippy mentality blabedibla...
- jrochkind1 13y ago
  So, which would you rather have, a lot less livestock to eat, or no way to treat bacterial infections? Oh, but guess what, you don't get to choose that trade-off -- you'll have a lot less livestock to eat either way. You can do it with or without entering the post-antibiotic era. (Or at any rate, a lot more expensive meat, which will likely result in a lot less of it, sure.) Fortunately, a lot less livestock to eat does not mean a global food shortage. People are quite capable of living with a lot less meat. It may be a global deliciousness shortage, because meat is delicious; but most people on the planet don't eat much meat already (cause they can't afford it). The OP is odd in suggesting "We have a few chances left to turn back the tide of resistance — but only a few, and not much room for mistakes. I hope we take them." -- without any hints as to what these chances are -- and then suggesting that if we don't take them, what we'll 'lose' is cheap meat from routine antibiotic use in livestock! But in fact, ceasing the use of routine antibiotics in livestock production -- before they become useless, because it'll be stopped when they become useless anyhow -- seems like the #1. What else you got?
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Erm. People have been eating meat on a regular, frequent basis only very recently in History. 60 years ago it was meat just one a month or something. And people didn't just die off because they couldn't eat meat anymore.
  - dnautics 13y ago
    That's simply not true. Inuit have almost exclusively eaten meat for centuries. And there are parts of the world where agriculture and irrigation don't work and animals which can feed on scrub are the staple.
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      Well, I was talking about Europe, mainly, and I assume in most countries of the developed word this was very much the same. I don't think Inuits have very much to do with the industrial production of meat we have nowadays, do they ?
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      Actually, I believe the Inuit don't practice animal husbandry either; they mainly get their food from the ocean (mostly as meat).
    - kayoone 13y ago
      It is, at least in Europe. Ask your grandparents and they will tell you that they maybe ate meat once a week
      - circlefavshape 13y ago
        What? I'm Irish and my grandparents ate meat, fish or eggs pretty much every day of their lives
        kayoone 13y ago
        Well not in the post WW2 germany my grandparents lived in.
- mistercow 13y ago
  It's pretty doubtful that a reduction in livestock would lead to a food shortage. The amount of resources it takes to produce a calorie of meat is vastly larger than to produce a calorie of plant-based food.
contingencies 13y ago
Unfortunately, you are right. Startup idea: cheap consumer-oriented broad spectrum antibiotic detection kits for meat and fish.
- kephra 13y ago
  Thats a great idea. But how to apply this in supper market? You could only check it after buying, and slapping the so called bio-butcher, if he sells you antibiotic meat, with the meat he sold.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    It would enable an effective labeling program.
- aaronbrethorst 13y ago
  Check for a lack of an organic certification label. The end.
  - smtddr 13y ago
    Well, you have to believe the USDA Organic label is actually being used correctly[1]. I say this as a USDA-Organic fan who tries his best to buy his family only things that carry that label. I'd buy a setup that allowed me to test my food; I thought about this awhile back[2]. 1. http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?template=TemplateN&topNav=&leftNav=NationalOrganicProgram&page=NOPFraudulentCertificates&description=NOP%20Fraudulent%20Certificates http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?tem... 2. https://twitter.com/SMTDDR/status/347885004606545920 https://twitter.com/SMTDDR/status/347885004606545920
Angostura 13y ago
Routine dosing is already banned in the EU
tokenadult 13y ago
One should ban antibiotics for animals world wide. I wouldn't go quite that far. I am on record here on HN as agreeing with a doctor who said in an interview, "Q: Do you think we have enough data to know what’s happening with the antibiotics used on the farm? "A: I think we know enough to say that we need to be doing a better job of improving appropriate use of antibiotics in all sectors, humans and animals. "Q: But the agriculture sector is different, because antibiotics have been used there for a long time with an eye toward improving the growth of the animals, really for food purposes, to make them bigger and fatter with less food. Does that concern you as a use? "A: Certainly the CDC believes quite firmly, and I think there are a number of veterinary experts here and in other places who agree with the stance that we should never be using antibiotics in agriculture or in people for any other purpose than to treat infections. "Using antibiotics to promote growth in animals is not a good use of antibiotics. It’s not careful use of this really delicate and invaluable resource."[1] I am also on record as saying, responding to a passage in another thread-opening article, >> "What Europe did: In the EU, all antibiotics used in human medicines are banned on farms—and no antibiotics can be used on farms for 'non-medical purposes,' i.e., growth promotion." << I'd like to see the United States follow that lead immediately, and I write this as a man who has several uncles and cousins who are farmers, including some who raise cattle. It makes sense to me to have lines of defense against transmission of animal-infecting, and especially antibiotic-resistant-animal-infecting, microbes to human beings, by controlling what animals raised as lifestock eat and how they are treated with veterinary medicines.[2] Animals get sick, both on and off the farm. Careful veterinary practice can enhance human health, by reducing sources of zoonotic infections. The epidemiologists who work to prevent human disease also keep track of news of animal infections on the farm and in the wild.[3] With this in mind, I can't agree with the policy idea One should ban antibiotics for animals world wide. expressed in the parent post. We should be careful about the use of antibiotics, many of which were originally "natural" substances emitted by microorganisms as a defense against other microorganisms, and we should use antibiotics mostly to treat cases of actual human or animal disease, and also use other infection control measures to prevent the spread of infectious diseases either to humans or to nonhuman animals, wherever they live. AFTER EDIT: Meanwhile, in human medicine, the development through natural selection of multiple-drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis is very alarming. I wish India were doing better in controlling tuberculosis. Both a newspaper in the United States, which did much to break the story,[4] and a newspaper from India[5] are in agreement with official sources from both countries[6][7] that much more needs to be done to stop the spread of drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis in India, which could threaten the health of the whole world. (A century and a half ago, tuberculosis was perhaps the world's leading cause of death.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6599795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6599795 (expressing agreement with the quoted expert in the thread-opening article) [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5674781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5674781 [3] http://www.cdc.gov/ncezid/ http://www.cdc.gov/ncezid/ http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/ http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/ [4] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303444204577460734274201756 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230344420... [5] http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news/40134749_1_stop-tb-department-mario-raviglione-jmm-meeting http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news... [6] http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of-Drug-Resistant-Tuberculosis-Challenges-and-Potential-Solutions-in-India.aspx http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of-Drug-R... [7] http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/pdfs/RNTCP%20Response%20DR%20TB%20in%20India%20-%20Jan%202012%20update.pdf http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/pdfs/RNTCP%20Response%20DR%20TB%2...
sampo 13y ago
> Antibiotics for industrial animal farms are one of the reasons bacteria develop multiple resistances. I have the impression (but haven't really checked any real sources on this) that the carefree use of antibiotics on farm animals is mostly an American thing. And that the use of antibiotics in animal farming is much more regulated in Europe. Don't know for sure, though. And don't know about the rest of the world.
- kayoone 13y ago
  Certainly true. My dad is a veterinarian and said its quite heavily regulated in germany and possibly Europe
- refurb 13y ago
  It would be interesting to see the incidence of multi-drug resistant bacteria in the US vs. the EU. Most people get MDR infections from other people, not from animals. I'm not saying animal to human infections don't occur, they obviously do, but it's not a major source of transmission.
- drzaiusapelord 13y ago
  Antibiotics on the farm are banned in the EU for anything but treating infections. This seems to be a largely an American problem. The real problem is that American politics are broken and adding even sane common-sense regulation against a mountain of lobbyists and corrupt politicians is an uphill battle that usually ends in failure (patent reform bill recently) or various compromises that kill any chance of the bill being very effective (ACA). I think the US is a case study in how this level of "direct democracy" usually gets gamed by monied interests.

batbomb 13y ago

> If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance — and trust me, we’re not far off When did journalists become biomedical experts? I don't want to read a story about a serious subject that says "trust me".

clinton_sf 13y ago
For what it's worth, journalists can and do talk to subject experts. Whether they quote their sources in a casual non-scientific article for Wired magazine is another thing. For more info (e.g., of a journalist talking to doctors and such), take a look at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hunting-the-nightmare-bacteria/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hunting-the-nightmar...
- dak1 13y ago
  In that case it would be better to write: > If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance — and many experts agree we may not be far off
  - MatmaRex 13y ago
    I'd say this would be worse. "many experts" is a weasel word, implying an authority behind the statement, but providing no proof of it. And "trust me" is at the least plain and honest.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- refurb 13y ago
  The recent data I've seen suggests that level of multi-drug resistant infections has actually leveled off or dropped slightly. Is it a problem? Yes. Are we close to the end? No.
  - dd36 13y ago

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Of the many topics that seem to capture the attention most readily, tales of the apocalypse to come are perhaps the most compelling. For reasons I don't completely fathom, people gravitate toward stories of impending doom much more readily than stories of impending happiness. History shows that 'good' unexpected things happen just as frequently as 'bad' unexpected things happen, and consequently we get a lot of change but not necessarily all bad change or all good change. Still you can write a blog post that the economy is near the breaking point, our civilization is mere moments away from collapse, or that some calamity is on the verge of wiping us out, and get all the page views you can monetize.

dicroce 13y ago
Everything you said is true. But so is the fact that people are starting to die of things that just a few years ago were curable.
shashwatak 13y ago
This article isn't some "2012" doomsday nonsense. This is a real and pressing concern, indeed has been a concern for decades.
- benihana 13y ago
  Just like the global food shortage that Malthusians assured us was bound to happen, the ozone layer fading away and UV rays destroying us all, Y2K breaking every computer on the planet. This time it's for real. This time, technology and human ingenuity isn't going to save us.
  - mildtrepidation 13y ago
    And whether this is "the big one" or not, with this attitude, we'll never be ready for anything that actually does go seriously wrong. "It hasn't happened before, so it can't happen now" makes for nothing but a great epitaph.
  - DennisP 13y ago

clinton_sf 13y ago

I suspect this problem will self-correct. It's not that we've run out of choices: it's partially that pharmaceutical companies had the narrow view that developing new antibiotic drugs is less profitable than developing drugs for chronic illness (e.g., to control cholesterol); once catastrophe hits due to bacteria being resistant to all current drugs, it will be extremely profitable to work on this class of drugs again. Take a look at this interview with Dr. John Rex M.D., (V.P., Clinical Research, AstraZeneca) [1] "Dr. JOHN REX: If you need an antibiotic, you need it only briefly. Indeed, that’s the— that’s the correct way to use an antibiotic. You use it only briefly. And from an economic standpoint of a developer, that means you’re not— you’re not getting the return on the investment you’ve made because you’ve spent between $600 million and a billion dollars to bring that new antibiotic to market." [1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-technology/hunting-the-nightmare-bacteria/transcript-51/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-techn...

ProblemFactory 13y ago
Most things in the world eventually self-correct. But before that happens, many people will be hurt and die in the process. For example, we could do away with CDC, FDA and building codes, and rely on Yelp customer reviews of drugs, restaurants and electrical contractors. Eventually the ones that kill people should get bad reviews and go out of business - but this won't help the first victims and their relatives.
- acchow 13y ago
  Intriguing to think about. But what will probably happen is the lack of controls will allow for higher profits - the companies that kill people will have way more money to pay off Yelp to censor bad reviews.
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    True, but Yelp would lose all credibility, so it wouldn't be used to determine anything than dining out.
  - 13y ago

FollowSteph3 13y ago

Nothing we do on the human scale compares to the routine use of antibiotics on the agricultural scale, especially when it comes to animals...

ck2 13y ago

Holy hell, antibiotics are used on fruit? To be honest I was a bit smug because I don't eat meat. So much for that. Wow we are in trouble.

spurgu 13y ago
Me too, but apparently it's true. At least for the US. "Antibiotics can also be found in vegetables and fruits. The U.S. Department of Agriculture funded a study to test this. Scientists took manure from animals that were given antibiotics. They grew different plants in the manure and then tested its leaves. What they found was alarming: 1. The antibiotic was present in fruits, vegetables as well as the vegetable leaves. 2. The amount of antibiotic in the plant was directly related to the amount in the soil. 3. The plants absorbed antibiotics in the soil as it grew. 4. Crops that grow underground might absorb even more antibiotics from the soil. Examples of such crops include potatoes, radishes, and carrots." http://www.consumer-health.com/services/cons_take66.php http://www.consumer-health.com/services/cons_take66.php
- Pxtl 13y ago
  And yet every time I mention my organic farm share all I get is condescension about what "snake-oil" organic farming is.
- refurb 13y ago
  And how much was in the fruit? This reminds me of the "there are prescription drugs in our drinking water" alarmism. Are they in there? Sure, are present in an amount that is biologically active? No. We're talking picograms of drugs.

300bps 13y ago

When We Lose Antibiotics, Here’s Everything Else We’ll Lose Too Well I guess all hope is lost then. The title isn't, "If We Lose Antibiotics" after all. So why bring it up at all? There are no (ahem) prescriptions for fixing the problem in the article. Just a clear, terrifying outline of most of the bad things that are going to happen. And a plug for her book that presumably has the cure? I read the Amazon reviews of the book (currently 25) and there isn't much of a mention of what the purpose of reading the book is. In fact the main purpose of reading the book based on the reviews I read is that it is supposed to scare the bejesus out of you. Again, to what purpose? Should I be advocating against livestock use of antibiotics? Should I be advocating for tighter control of prescribing antibiotics? This could be the scariest thing in the world but honestly it seems more like sensationalist journalism and an attempt to sell a book than a call to serious action.

andyjohnson0 13y ago
You admit that the problem is real and serious, but then ask what is the point of raising the issue, and accuse the author of sensationalism? Really? Read the last three paragraphs of the article. The point of it and book (which was published almost three years ago) is to raise awareness of the issue. We are so close to the edge here that "scaring the bejesus" out of people might now be worth a try, since nothing else seems to be changing our behaviour?
- 300bps 13y ago
  You seem to be so caught up in this issue that you just aren't listening. Here is my point spelled out again: There are two parts to a legitimate campaign to fix this. Educate people on the problem and educate people on the solution. Why does this article only focus on the problem and then have an advertisement for her book?
  - andyjohnson0 13y ago
    "Why does this article only focus on the problem" Because we already know what the solution is and it is described in numerous articles, books, papers and reports published over several decades. If you want to know what you should be advocating then read them. Please don't just say "So why bring it up at all?" This article is just about the consequences of failure to adopt a solution. There is no requirement that every work on antibiotic resistance has to adopt the problem/solution structure that you require.

Houshalter 13y ago

Aren't drug resistant bacteria weaker though? Like reproducing slower, spreading less, being more likely to be defeated by your own immune system? Also antibiotics would still be good against most bacteria since only some have evolved antibiotic resistance. I know they can sometimes spread to other species of bacteria, but they still would be at a disadvantage outside of places that use antibiotics. If you just got cut or something with random bacteria in it wouldn't you probably be ok?

has2k1 13y ago
On the whole, drug resistant bacteria will likely remain as capable in other characteristics. Due to the complex nature of DNA (specifically gene functions), genetic codes tends to be multipurpose. When select for any one attribute (e.g drug resistance) you could potentially affect zero or more other attributes. You just won't know which ones (based on today's bio-genetics understanding). So there is no reason to expect drug resistant bacteria to be weaker. You are right bacteria have proven very cable at appropriating useful DNA from across the species. Also, we can reasonably expect drug resistant bacteria to spread just like other bacteria spreads (i.e varied methods and levels of difficulty). Among the factors that affect the spread of bacteria is the mobility of the host. If a host dies in timely fashion the bacteria spreads less and if they linger around longer the opportunity to spread increases. Like other infectious pathogens, this is mainly species dependent. When a multitude of antibiotic resistant bacteria spread around sufficiently are a common stay in the ether then they become part of the random bacteria that would likely infect if you just got a cut.
chalst 13y ago
I don't we can make exactly this generalisation, but certainly from the existence of superbugs responsible for one disease it follows 1. neither that those superbugs will come to dominate the bacteria responsible for that disease (superbugs might never be strong outside the hospital, say) 2. nor that superbugs will emerge for many other diseases. She's painting a worst-case scenario, which has a consciousness-raising value, but no one should be saying that doom is upon us.

riggins 13y ago

bring on the cricket protein powder

jotm 13y ago

Well, I've yet to use antibiotics, and I hope I never have to. The only time I've been given some was after a minor surgery.

encephalogram 13y ago

Mass hysteria and fear mongering, in the name of book sales. Blah, blah, blah. I'm not worried. I believe engineering can solve whatever microbiology and pharmaceuticals can't. But in the spirit of the article... FLEE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

smegel 13y ago

Are we really going to care that heart surgery is no longer viable when deadly pandemics are spreading around the world killing percentiles of the population?

josefresco 13y ago

If you're interested on antibiotics there's a good Frontline piece on "gram negatives". http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/10/frontline-asks-has-the-age-of-antibiotics-come-to-an-end.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/10/frontline-asks-h... Their point was that it's not "when" we reach this point ... we already have.

pgreenwood 13y ago

There's considerable promise in phage therapies as an alternative to antibiotics. And they may well not suffer the same problems of resistance since phages are targeted to specific bacteria.

dd36 13y ago
Why would that prevent evolution any differently?
- pgreenwood 13y ago
  Bacterial antibiotic resistance increases with exposure to the antibiotic. With targeted treatment there is less exposure for a given clinical effect. Therefore lower resistance.

nlvd 13y ago

Is this happening actually a bad thing? With vast over population about to occur, it seems like this might be a natural solution to a difficult problem. If all the sick people start dying again as would have originally happened things like plagues/wars will be considerably more devastating.

mnarayan01 13y ago
Are you seriously asking whether people dying earlier is a bad thing?
- nlvd 13y ago
  Yes.

estebank 13y ago

I see a lot of people here dismissing this as a non-problem because it wouldn't be of apocalyptic proportions. I don't think anybody with two brain cells to rub together would say losing antibiotics would be an extinction event, that's not the point. The point is that infections will likely become the number one killer, it already is number two[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...

wil421 13y ago

This article is talking as if all bacteria would suddenly become resistant to everything. I doubt it would be so sudden are more of a gradual decline.

jkbyc 13y ago

There is a nice simulation game where the goal is to kill all of humanity by evolving a disease: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miniclip.plagueinc https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miniclip.p... You can learn a thing or two about the problem space just by playing the game.

phryk 13y ago

> Tattoos. This triggered my FUD detector.

kornork 13y ago

I would love to know the current status of using viruses (bacteriophages) to replace antibiotics. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/409905/using-viruses-to-kill-bacteria/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/409905/using-viruses-to...

sn0v 13y ago

Unfortunately, by the time there are enough regulations regarding the use of antibiotics (for livestock and agriculture) worldwide, it might just be too late.