6 ms·

Whilst I totally appreciate the seriousness of this, I still don't get what exactly I can do about this. Most likely, nothing. Therefore, much like the potenti

by swombat 12y ago

Whilst I totally appreciate the seriousness of this, I still don't get what exactly I can do about this. Most likely, nothing. Therefore, much like the potentially developing WW3 in Ukraine, or Ebola outbreak in Africa, or rape culture in India, this kind of news is fairly useless. It just creates negative feelings with no positive outcome. I'm happy to be convinced otherwise - what can I do about this?

luckyno13 12y ago
The best thing you can do is keep informed, and keep others around you informed. Many people don't realize this is such a rapidly progressing issue. In fact, many people may not even know that they are improperly taking their Antibiotics and what the side effects are to doing so. If more informed I feel like the public could do a bit better at turning down Antibiotics when they aren't necessary, and using them properly when they are. Just that action would go a long way. Edit- I would also like to add that a lot of people don't realize just how easy it is to get an infection, and education could go a long way in keeping it from happening in the first place. It reminds me of that guy on reddit with the horrible case of necrotizing fasciitis that he ended up with after retrieving a football from a koi pond. His day by day imgur chronicle was both interesting and horrifying.
- midas007 12y ago
  It doesn't have to be that way, and waiting around for "someone else to handle it" will likely lead to a Tragedy of the Commons. Call your representatives [US: 0,1] or regional government representative (I just called my senator, and on hold for house rep now), tell them we need an emergency crash program to develop new, tightly-regulated antibiotics so that infection doesn't become the leading cause of deaths in 2025. Because it takes years and billions to develop new antibiotics, this is something companies will not pursue on their own initiative. If not, it'll be a return to the 19th century. Good luck with that. [0] http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ [1] http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_c...
  - refurb 12y ago
    You're not going to have new antibiotics without biotech or pharmaceutical companies helping. The government needs to provide incentive for antibiotic research, right now regulatory and reimbursement issues are making the therapeutic area very unattractive.
goldenkey 12y ago
Antibiotics work on a specific mechanism of action. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antibiotics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antibiotics New mechanisms of action are needed, more specifically, mechanisms that evolution cannot biologically defeat. Consider an agent like bleach, 99.99% effective because the makeup of a cell does not really permit it to protect against such a caustic agent. Clearly bleach can't be used as an antiobitic but I use it to illustrate the point that a evolutionary-unlikely antibiotic mechanism would be worldly profound.
- timr 12y ago
  You're right, but here's the problem: things that are robust to evolutionary change tend to kill everything (e.g. chlorine). There's a tension between finding targets that are specific to an organism, but well conserved, so that the organism can't simply evolve away from the specific threat. This is really the alpha and the omega of antibiotics and antiviral research: finding the specific lethal target that can't easily be changed. It's damned hard, and it's why most of our antibiotics have been generated by nature, not by rational design.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    As usual, there's a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1217/ https://xkcd.com/1217/ It's easy to kill bacteria, viruses, cancer, you name it. We have lots of tools that can kill them, from guns to flame throwers to acid. The trick is killing them without also killing the patient, as you say.
  - Already__Taken 12y ago
    So we need to make it another 50-100 year range so we can just replace it with robots?
    - timr 12y ago
      Hehe...the future is now, sort of. We already have robots that can screen large libraries of chemicals against bacteria for antibiotic effectiveness.
k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "Whilst I totally appreciate the seriousness of this, I still don't get what exactly I can do about this. Most likely, nothing." I think you can help by informing others. If you know a family member not completing their course of antibiotics for example explain to them why it's so important.
dfxm12 12y ago
If your doctor is prescribing you an antibiotic, you can ask them what the pros and cons are of taking it. If you are willing to deal with the cons, then maybe don't take the antibiotic. Usually, the con will be that you feel sick for a bit longer. Note though, that you might need them to get over whatever it is you have.
- swalkergibson 12y ago
  This is absolutely accurate. "People were generally aware of the link between overuse of antibiotics and increased resistance. Only 8% of respondents did not agree that if antibiotics are taken too often they are less likely to work in the future. But many people (43%) incorrectly believed that antibiotics were effective in viral conditions." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934431/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934431/
artmageddon 12y ago
I will echo lucky's sentiment - staying educated, and educating others around you, goes a big way. I know people very close to me who still believe it's okay to stop taking antibiotics the moment they feel better, rather than finishing out the entire prescription. I'd like to believe that buying meat / other foods that aren't treated with antibiotics could make a difference as well, but I'm not sure how much impact that would have.
FooBarWidget 12y ago
Not sure why swombat got downvoted, he makes good points. Heck, once in a while, an HN submission for along the lines of "Why reading news is harmful and why you shouldn't read it" goes by, and it gets upvoted a lot. What can the general public do about this? It's not like I can go to my family physician and tell him to use less antibiotics (he already doesn't; I'm in the Netherlands), and expect to make any kind of meaningful difference. This is one of those "tragedy of the commons" kind of problems that can only be solved if everybody cooperates.
pessimizer 12y ago
Be educated about it, and educate others. Eventually, you will be called on to vote on something, and some intrenched interest will try to convince you that it is an encroachment of big government on the sovereignty of job creators. Good luck trying to teach them then.
exratione 12y ago
Donate to research groups that are working on ways of controlling bacterial and viral infections that are a step beyond the present status quo. Things like DRACO [1] spring to mind. Present day fundamental (as opposed to translational) biomedical research is very cheap in comparison to the state of things even a decade or two ago. Small fundraising groups can make a big impact now. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO_(antiviral) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO_(antiviral)
coenhyde 12y ago
Pressure your government (where ever you may be) to make responsible use of antibiotics a priority. The misuse that terrifies me the most are antibiotics used on livestock. Particularly the antibiotics that are also used on humans. In my opinion antibiotics should not be used as a growth promoter and only used to help sick animals.
- sgk284 12y ago
  > should not be used as a growth promoter and only used to help sick animals The issue is that a lot of animals get sick from being crammed together in small areas, unable to move, while living in their own feces and urine. If we regulated animal treatment better and required certain living conditions for animals they wouldn't get sick nearly as often and wouldn't need nearly as many antibiotics. As it stands, regulating antibiotics to be used only on sick animals wouldn't change much since an incredibly large percentage of livestock are often sick (as a consequence of living conditions).
  - midas007 12y ago
    I don't eat meat or consume animal-derived products for this reason. This is where the next pandemic is mostly likely to originate, and it's completely preventable.
    - tomp 12y ago
      Unless you also avoid meat for other reasons, wouldn't it be better to eat meat, but only from those farmers that raise livestock in humane, sustainable conditions (organic/free range/...)? That would increase competition and support their business models.
  - coenhyde 12y ago
    You're right. This needs to change as well.
- midas007 12y ago
  That's one side, the other side would be a crash program to develop a spectrum of closely-guarded, last-resort antibiotics.
Slackwise 12y ago
The primary source of antibiotic abuse is in farm animals. Do you really want to help? Start eating less meat, and tell others to also do so. Tell them why. Tell them to also tell others. When there is less demand for meat, then there will be less land devoted to animal feed/grazing, and more to food crops. Less animals that can be infected, less antibiotics used, etc, etc. Want to really help solve it? Don't eat meat. Get others to stop eating meat. Invest in faux/lab-grown meat companies. Disease free meat can be grown. We just need to make it profitable. Honestly, this is the future. Farming like this is unsustainable, not only for the antibiotic reasons. (I'll spare everyone the ethical/transhumanist discussion.)
- azth 12y ago
  > Want to really help solve it? Don't eat meat. Get others to stop eating meat. Why not just get meat from farms that treat their animals properly (no cramming, free-range, etc)? I don't think it should be this extreme.
- pound 12y ago
  red meat is high in iron and anemia is not nice. of course there are other sources of iron, i'm just saying that stopping eating meat should go with balancing diet.
Houshalter 12y ago
That's true for pretty much all significant news. And it's not like we are helpless, it's still possible to invest in new antibiotics and strictly control the ones that still work.
vacri 12y ago
If given the option, you can decline antibiotics for minor ailments.

by swombat 12y ago

luckyno13 12y ago

The best thing you can do is keep informed, and keep others around you informed. Many people don't realize this is such a rapidly progressing issue. In fact, many people may not even know that they are improperly taking their Antibiotics and what the side effects are to doing so. If more informed I feel like the public could do a bit better at turning down Antibiotics when they aren't necessary, and using them properly when they are. Just that action would go a long way. Edit- I would also like to add that a lot of people don't realize just how easy it is to get an infection, and education could go a long way in keeping it from happening in the first place. It reminds me of that guy on reddit with the horrible case of necrotizing fasciitis that he ended up with after retrieving a football from a koi pond. His day by day imgur chronicle was both interesting and horrifying.

midas007 12y ago
It doesn't have to be that way, and waiting around for "someone else to handle it" will likely lead to a Tragedy of the Commons. Call your representatives [US: 0,1] or regional government representative (I just called my senator, and on hold for house rep now), tell them we need an emergency crash program to develop new, tightly-regulated antibiotics so that infection doesn't become the leading cause of deaths in 2025. Because it takes years and billions to develop new antibiotics, this is something companies will not pursue on their own initiative. If not, it'll be a return to the 19th century. Good luck with that. [0] http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ [1] http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_c...
- refurb 12y ago
  You're not going to have new antibiotics without biotech or pharmaceutical companies helping. The government needs to provide incentive for antibiotic research, right now regulatory and reimbursement issues are making the therapeutic area very unattractive.

goldenkey 12y ago

Antibiotics work on a specific mechanism of action. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antibiotics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antibiotics New mechanisms of action are needed, more specifically, mechanisms that evolution cannot biologically defeat. Consider an agent like bleach, 99.99% effective because the makeup of a cell does not really permit it to protect against such a caustic agent. Clearly bleach can't be used as an antiobitic but I use it to illustrate the point that a evolutionary-unlikely antibiotic mechanism would be worldly profound.

timr 12y ago
You're right, but here's the problem: things that are robust to evolutionary change tend to kill everything (e.g. chlorine). There's a tension between finding targets that are specific to an organism, but well conserved, so that the organism can't simply evolve away from the specific threat. This is really the alpha and the omega of antibiotics and antiviral research: finding the specific lethal target that can't easily be changed. It's damned hard, and it's why most of our antibiotics have been generated by nature, not by rational design.
- mikeash 12y ago
  As usual, there's a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1217/ https://xkcd.com/1217/ It's easy to kill bacteria, viruses, cancer, you name it. We have lots of tools that can kill them, from guns to flame throwers to acid. The trick is killing them without also killing the patient, as you say.
- Already__Taken 12y ago
  So we need to make it another 50-100 year range so we can just replace it with robots?
  - timr 12y ago
    Hehe...the future is now, sort of. We already have robots that can screen large libraries of chemicals against bacteria for antibiotic effectiveness.

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> "Whilst I totally appreciate the seriousness of this, I still don't get what exactly I can do about this. Most likely, nothing." I think you can help by informing others. If you know a family member not completing their course of antibiotics for example explain to them why it's so important.

dfxm12 12y ago

If your doctor is prescribing you an antibiotic, you can ask them what the pros and cons are of taking it. If you are willing to deal with the cons, then maybe don't take the antibiotic. Usually, the con will be that you feel sick for a bit longer. Note though, that you might need them to get over whatever it is you have.

swalkergibson 12y ago
This is absolutely accurate. "People were generally aware of the link between overuse of antibiotics and increased resistance. Only 8% of respondents did not agree that if antibiotics are taken too often they are less likely to work in the future. But many people (43%) incorrectly believed that antibiotics were effective in viral conditions." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934431/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934431/

artmageddon 12y ago

I will echo lucky's sentiment - staying educated, and educating others around you, goes a big way. I know people very close to me who still believe it's okay to stop taking antibiotics the moment they feel better, rather than finishing out the entire prescription. I'd like to believe that buying meat / other foods that aren't treated with antibiotics could make a difference as well, but I'm not sure how much impact that would have.

FooBarWidget 12y ago

Not sure why swombat got downvoted, he makes good points. Heck, once in a while, an HN submission for along the lines of "Why reading news is harmful and why you shouldn't read it" goes by, and it gets upvoted a lot. What can the general public do about this? It's not like I can go to my family physician and tell him to use less antibiotics (he already doesn't; I'm in the Netherlands), and expect to make any kind of meaningful difference. This is one of those "tragedy of the commons" kind of problems that can only be solved if everybody cooperates.

pessimizer 12y ago

Be educated about it, and educate others. Eventually, you will be called on to vote on something, and some intrenched interest will try to convince you that it is an encroachment of big government on the sovereignty of job creators. Good luck trying to teach them then.

exratione 12y ago

Donate to research groups that are working on ways of controlling bacterial and viral infections that are a step beyond the present status quo. Things like DRACO [1] spring to mind. Present day fundamental (as opposed to translational) biomedical research is very cheap in comparison to the state of things even a decade or two ago. Small fundraising groups can make a big impact now. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO_(antiviral) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO_(antiviral)

coenhyde 12y ago

Pressure your government (where ever you may be) to make responsible use of antibiotics a priority. The misuse that terrifies me the most are antibiotics used on livestock. Particularly the antibiotics that are also used on humans. In my opinion antibiotics should not be used as a growth promoter and only used to help sick animals.

sgk284 12y ago
> should not be used as a growth promoter and only used to help sick animals The issue is that a lot of animals get sick from being crammed together in small areas, unable to move, while living in their own feces and urine. If we regulated animal treatment better and required certain living conditions for animals they wouldn't get sick nearly as often and wouldn't need nearly as many antibiotics. As it stands, regulating antibiotics to be used only on sick animals wouldn't change much since an incredibly large percentage of livestock are often sick (as a consequence of living conditions).
- midas007 12y ago
  I don't eat meat or consume animal-derived products for this reason. This is where the next pandemic is mostly likely to originate, and it's completely preventable.
  - tomp 12y ago
    Unless you also avoid meat for other reasons, wouldn't it be better to eat meat, but only from those farmers that raise livestock in humane, sustainable conditions (organic/free range/...)? That would increase competition and support their business models.
- coenhyde 12y ago
  You're right. This needs to change as well.
midas007 12y ago
That's one side, the other side would be a crash program to develop a spectrum of closely-guarded, last-resort antibiotics.

Slackwise 12y ago

The primary source of antibiotic abuse is in farm animals. Do you really want to help? Start eating less meat, and tell others to also do so. Tell them why. Tell them to also tell others. When there is less demand for meat, then there will be less land devoted to animal feed/grazing, and more to food crops. Less animals that can be infected, less antibiotics used, etc, etc. Want to really help solve it? Don't eat meat. Get others to stop eating meat. Invest in faux/lab-grown meat companies. Disease free meat can be grown. We just need to make it profitable. Honestly, this is the future. Farming like this is unsustainable, not only for the antibiotic reasons. (I'll spare everyone the ethical/transhumanist discussion.)

azth 12y ago
> Want to really help solve it? Don't eat meat. Get others to stop eating meat. Why not just get meat from farms that treat their animals properly (no cramming, free-range, etc)? I don't think it should be this extreme.
pound 12y ago
red meat is high in iron and anemia is not nice. of course there are other sources of iron, i'm just saying that stopping eating meat should go with balancing diet.

Houshalter 12y ago

That's true for pretty much all significant news. And it's not like we are helpless, it's still possible to invest in new antibiotics and strictly control the ones that still work.

vacri 12y ago

If given the option, you can decline antibiotics for minor ailments.