11 ms·

> Last year, the chief medical officer for England, Prof Dame Sally Davies, said the rise in drug-resistant infections was comparable to the threat of global wa

by doktrin 13y ago

> Last year, the chief medical officer for England, Prof Dame Sally Davies, said the rise in drug-resistant infections was comparable to the threat of global warming. Perhaps I lack proper context, but drug-resistance terrifies me significantly more than global warming. Primarily, I think, because we are still speculating about the consequences of climate change - if not so much its causes. In contrast, we know what a world without antibiotics looks like, and it's pretty horrifying.

_dark_matter_ 13y ago
I completely agree with you. Maybe this was a subtle way to get the public to understand the catastrophe that is global warming as well...
luckyno13 13y ago
My concern with this line being drawn is the risk of people drawing a line between them and then transferring the overwhelming amount of skepticism of climate change to such a serious topic as this. All we need is to give the anti-vaccine nuts another reason to shit all over herd immunity.
- chc 13y ago
  Both are pretty serious topics.
- ams6110 13y ago
  I get what your're saying (I think) but vaccine != antibiotic. We're not (that I've heard) seeing the emergence of vaccine-resistant polio for example.
  - luckyno13 13y ago
    Right, I get that, but this article mentions vaccinations as part of preventive care.
  - akiselev 13y ago
    Polio? Maybe not yet, but "vaccine resistance" isn't the same thing as antibacterial resistance. Antibiotic resistance is generally created through contact with the antibiotic but stuff like polio, measles, mumps, and rubella just need an unvaccinated host coming into contact with vaccinated people long enough. Once the unvaccinated host's disease mutates enough (and it never stops mutating), it will start jumping to vaccinated hosts whose immune systems no longer recognize the threat as one it has prepared for by the vaccine [1][2]. [1] http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa060775 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa060775 [2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X02006278 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X02...
k-mcgrady 13y ago
I agree. I recently had to take antibiotics for the first time in as long as I can remember. Without them I probably would have been in significant/debilitating pain for the foreseeable future. At the same time I happened to come across a really long detailed article about antibiotics explaining about the dangers of resistance and life before antibiotics. If we don't fix this or find an alternative solution we'll essentially be going back in time in our health care.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
justin66 13y ago
The worst case scenario for global warming is that it's an extinction-level event and civilization ends. The worst case scenario for antibiotic resistance is that people live with the medical uncertainties our grandparents and great-grandparents lived with. Assuming everyone understands that, it's an interesting case study in psychology as to why the second one might be scarier than the first one.
- doktrin 13y ago
  > The worst case scenario for global warming is that it's an extinction-level event and civilization ends. > Assuming everyone understands that, it's an interesting case study in psychology as to why the second one might be scarier than the first one. It doesn't make sense to base decisions on a worst case scenario without taking probability into account.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    Indeed. I am also not aware of how climate change could lead to human extinction.
    - mooreds 13y ago
      This book outlines various geopolitical climate change reactions. http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats/dp/1851688145 http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats/... The last scenario talks about, if I recall correctly, the oceans becoming more welcoming to bacteria that produce hydrogen sulfide. Sorry, I don't remember the details, but will update tonight from the book at home if I remember.
      - fixermark 13y ago
        Sounds like you're thinking of the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event#Anoxia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinc...) Thumbnail sketch of the event: something (possibly massive volcanic eruptions near in time to a significant meteorite impact) deoxygenated the water enough to cause a substantial marine life die-off. The death of so much marine life in such a short time encouraged sulfate-reducing bacteria, which would have released significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere. Hydrogen sulfide would have killed plant (and, therefore, animal) life and weakened the ozone layer, exposing the suriving flora and fauna to further UV radiation. "96% of all marine species[5] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct." There is some concern regarding a risk (I have no idea how big the risk is) that anthropogenic global warming could "tip the scales" of the global ecology towards the conditions that allow for a Permian-Triassic-style cascade.
Daishiman 13y ago
> Primarily, I think, because we are still speculating about the consequences of climate change - if not so much its causes. This is factually untrue. There is a greater scientific consensus on the origins of anthropogenic climate change than there is on the origins of many common diseases. The climate change trends are very well known, the models that existed 15 years ago have worked extremely well at predicting current climate trends, and the impact in the food supply chain is being well documented, not to mention the myriad other observed changes in ocean acidity, coastal degradation, Arctic and Antarctic surface ice, Andean permafrost, and desertification, just to name a few areas studies by completely different specialties which are confirming the predictions.
- thenmar 13y ago
  Thank you for posting this. I don't understand how climate change denialism is such a popular opinion among people who _should_ know better.
- doktrin 13y ago
  > There is a greater scientific consensus on the origins of anthropogenic climate change than there is on the origins of many common diseases. You are misrepresenting my statement. I specifically referred to consequences, not origins.
- vixin 13y ago
  Models working well? Frankly laughable. Global temperature rising for almost 25 years at half the central rate predicted by the IPCC in 1990 and no global warming at all for half the RSS satellite record. Since you mention consensus (is that how to do science? Maybe we should introduce elections for new theories) - but still let's proceed; only 64 (or 0.5%) of 11,944 scientific abstracts published since 1991 state that most of the global warming since 1950 is manmade.
  - thenmar 13y ago
    Well, yeah, that is how you do science, actually.
  - 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

by doktrin 13y ago

_dark_matter_ 13y ago

I completely agree with you. Maybe this was a subtle way to get the public to understand the catastrophe that is global warming as well...

luckyno13 13y ago

My concern with this line being drawn is the risk of people drawing a line between them and then transferring the overwhelming amount of skepticism of climate change to such a serious topic as this. All we need is to give the anti-vaccine nuts another reason to shit all over herd immunity.

chc 13y ago
Both are pretty serious topics.
ams6110 13y ago
I get what your're saying (I think) but vaccine != antibiotic. We're not (that I've heard) seeing the emergence of vaccine-resistant polio for example.
- luckyno13 13y ago
  Right, I get that, but this article mentions vaccinations as part of preventive care.
- akiselev 13y ago
  Polio? Maybe not yet, but "vaccine resistance" isn't the same thing as antibacterial resistance. Antibiotic resistance is generally created through contact with the antibiotic but stuff like polio, measles, mumps, and rubella just need an unvaccinated host coming into contact with vaccinated people long enough. Once the unvaccinated host's disease mutates enough (and it never stops mutating), it will start jumping to vaccinated hosts whose immune systems no longer recognize the threat as one it has prepared for by the vaccine [1][2]. [1] http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa060775 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa060775 [2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X02006278 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X02...

k-mcgrady 13y ago

I agree. I recently had to take antibiotics for the first time in as long as I can remember. Without them I probably would have been in significant/debilitating pain for the foreseeable future. At the same time I happened to come across a really long detailed article about antibiotics explaining about the dangers of resistance and life before antibiotics. If we don't fix this or find an alternative solution we'll essentially be going back in time in our health care.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

justin66 13y ago

The worst case scenario for global warming is that it's an extinction-level event and civilization ends. The worst case scenario for antibiotic resistance is that people live with the medical uncertainties our grandparents and great-grandparents lived with. Assuming everyone understands that, it's an interesting case study in psychology as to why the second one might be scarier than the first one.

doktrin 13y ago
> The worst case scenario for global warming is that it's an extinction-level event and civilization ends. > Assuming everyone understands that, it's an interesting case study in psychology as to why the second one might be scarier than the first one. It doesn't make sense to base decisions on a worst case scenario without taking probability into account.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  Indeed. I am also not aware of how climate change could lead to human extinction.
  - mooreds 13y ago
    This book outlines various geopolitical climate change reactions. http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats/dp/1851688145 http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats/... The last scenario talks about, if I recall correctly, the oceans becoming more welcoming to bacteria that produce hydrogen sulfide. Sorry, I don't remember the details, but will update tonight from the book at home if I remember.
    - fixermark 13y ago
      Sounds like you're thinking of the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event#Anoxia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinc...) Thumbnail sketch of the event: something (possibly massive volcanic eruptions near in time to a significant meteorite impact) deoxygenated the water enough to cause a substantial marine life die-off. The death of so much marine life in such a short time encouraged sulfate-reducing bacteria, which would have released significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere. Hydrogen sulfide would have killed plant (and, therefore, animal) life and weakened the ozone layer, exposing the suriving flora and fauna to further UV radiation. "96% of all marine species[5] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct." There is some concern regarding a risk (I have no idea how big the risk is) that anthropogenic global warming could "tip the scales" of the global ecology towards the conditions that allow for a Permian-Triassic-style cascade.

Daishiman 13y ago

> Primarily, I think, because we are still speculating about the consequences of climate change - if not so much its causes. This is factually untrue. There is a greater scientific consensus on the origins of anthropogenic climate change than there is on the origins of many common diseases. The climate change trends are very well known, the models that existed 15 years ago have worked extremely well at predicting current climate trends, and the impact in the food supply chain is being well documented, not to mention the myriad other observed changes in ocean acidity, coastal degradation, Arctic and Antarctic surface ice, Andean permafrost, and desertification, just to name a few areas studies by completely different specialties which are confirming the predictions.

thenmar 13y ago
Thank you for posting this. I don't understand how climate change denialism is such a popular opinion among people who _should_ know better.
doktrin 13y ago
> There is a greater scientific consensus on the origins of anthropogenic climate change than there is on the origins of many common diseases. You are misrepresenting my statement. I specifically referred to consequences, not origins.
vixin 13y ago
Models working well? Frankly laughable. Global temperature rising for almost 25 years at half the central rate predicted by the IPCC in 1990 and no global warming at all for half the RSS satellite record. Since you mention consensus (is that how to do science? Maybe we should introduce elections for new theories) - but still let's proceed; only 64 (or 0.5%) of 11,944 scientific abstracts published since 1991 state that most of the global warming since 1950 is manmade.
- thenmar 13y ago
  Well, yeah, that is how you do science, actually.
- 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]