("In the center of the plate is a colony of Penicillium notatum, a mold that produces penicillin. After appearance of the mold colony, the plate was overlaid with a bacterial culture of Micrococcus luteus which forms a yellow "lawn" of growth. A zone of inhibition of bacterial growth surrounds the fungal colony where penicillin has diffused into the medium." Source here)
(Image from bact.wisc.edu)
On Monday, October 15, 2007, Ashton Bonds died of an antibiotic-resistant staph infection. A senior and athlete at Staunton River High Scoool, Bedford VA, the 17 year old had been hospitilized for more than a week. The infecton that entered deep into his body had infected his kidneys, liver, lungs and the muscles around his heart. He could not be saved.
Drug-resistant infections until recently were spread mostly from hospitals. Now, disturbingly, they have jumped into communities and are spreading there. It is not only staph infections. It is also drug-resistant forms of TB, gonorrhea, malaria and childhood ear infections, among many others, here
It is an over-due bill which we have been fortunate to escape paying until now. Doctors and scientists have warned us for years that what we were doing would make this time arrive. But until now we really did not believe that.
How did we get here?.
The world of antibiotics began for the human race on a large scale during World War II. That war saw countless soldiers saved from death from infected wounds, on a scale unimagined before then As antibiotics entered the civilian world, drastic changes came. Many old diseases that had cursed humankind from the beginning all but disappeared. A ruptured appendix was no longer an automatic death sentence. (Before anti-biotics, I saw my best friend die in a few days from a ruptured appendix. She was just 10. The doctors were helpless.)
Significantly, by now some 20 years have been added to the human life span in the developed countries. This was important in leading to the "graying" of the populations of Japan and Europe, with the U.S. not far behind.
It hsa also been a big contributor to our Social Security crisis. When Social Security started, people lived to an average age of 65. Most people died before they could collect benefits for even a year! Now American men live to 78 and women to 83 on the average., thanks in no small part to antibiotics. They collect benefits for 13 and 18 years respectively. That has helped overwhelm the Social Security system.
Vaccinations may account for around half of this longer life span, but antibiotics account for much of it.
How did we manage to abuse antibiotics to the point that we are in danger of losing their usefulness? Here are the major ways:
-Overusing antibiotics. For years we have been warned not to take them for every little thing, but that didn't stop us. We insisted on them for colds and flu, especially for our kids. But colds and flu are caused by viruses, not germs. Antibiotics are useless for them. Such overuse of antibiotics has accelerated the development of germs resistant to them.
-Misusing antibiotics. When we take them, we tend to stop as soon as we feel OK instead of taking the "full course" our doctors warn us to take. We don't see why we should keep taking them after we are well. But the reason is that germs have a life cycle. We have to keep taking the antibiotic until after the next generation spawns in our bodies, so the antibiotic can get the new crop too. We mostly haven't done that. Which is how we got drug-resistanc TB, for instance. And how TB has made a big comeback, after it was thought to have disappeared. It was mostly from TB patients not taking their antibiotics for as long as the doctor told them to.
-Industrial use of antibiotics on a massive scale. Not only indiscriminate use of antibiotics by veterinarians, but also by agriculture. Factory farms and feed lots use an incredible amount of antibiotics. They use them not only when the animals are sick, but also when they are well, to prevent them from getting sick. Fish farms also use tremendous amounts of antibiotics. Why? The animals and the fish are kept so close together in such a small space, surrounded by their own excrement, that they get sick very easily. Using antibiotics on such a gigantic scale helps to accelerate the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of germs even more. It also adds antibiotics to our bodies when we eat such animals and fish.
So what do we do now? We have to start using stronger personal hygiene, especially with cleaning our hands. We have to cleanse and sanitize our surroundings in ways that have not seemed necessary for some 60 years. We have to be more careful about what we eat and drink. We have to be more careful about what we touch and what we put in our mouths. We will need to limit intimate contact to a very few people. (Faithful monogamy might even make a comeback!) We also need to be more concerned about where we travel and how to protect ourselves better when we do. If we bring home a strange illness, it could be much harder to cure. And we need to take a new look at centralized air conditioning and heating systems. They can spread germs widely through entire buildings - not only hospitals, but also hotels, office buildings, stores and other large buildings. Not to mention planes, trains and buses. (See here for additional protective precautions.)
We may be on the verge of leaving this comforting 60-year-old age of broad protection by antibiotics from disabling diseases and shorter life spans. The times, they are a-changing. We will have to learn how to change with them.
