
Antibiotics Are Dead; Long Live Antibiotics - ghubbard
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26701
======
timr
_" But this pessimism rests entirely on one assumption: that we have no
realistic prospect of developing new classes of antibiotics any time soon,
antibiotics that our major threats have not yet seen and thus not acquired
resistance to."_

Uh, no. The "pessimism" (as it were) doesn't extend from that assumption. It
extends from the fact that very few people are doing the basic research
anymore, and even fewer companies are willing to invest the enormous amounts
of money necessary to shuttle candidate drugs from promising lead to clinical
approval. It's not as if this is the only story of a candidate antibiotic.
Most don't become drugs.

And in any case, the "pessimism" isn't really pessimism, so much as a
community of knowledgable people sounding the alarm about an impeding crisis.
To the extent that it gets people doing innovative things to solve the
problem, it's a _good thing_ , not something to be criticized. I don't even
know why you would write this kind of piece -- the caveats at the end
notwithstanding, it makes it sound like we don't have to worry anymore,
because things are "speeding up". But they aren't speeding up. This is a good
discovery, but it's just a start.

~~~
21
When people will start dying en masse from this you'll see how suddenly the
priorities will change. Sure, it's a tragedy right now that the incentives are
not properly aligned, but I wouldn't worry about doomsday scenarios.

~~~
stcredzero
_When people will start dying en masse from this you 'll see how suddenly the
priorities will change._

Someday, I hope to live in an educated, industrialized, humanist society that
can change policy direction without large numbers of people dying. (Of course,
I already do. The answer is lots of $$$, as usual.)

------
ChuckMcM
What I love about this article is that it demonstrates once again that some
discoveries are actually pretty awesome. If I am not careful the unrelenting
stories of future calamity can weigh me down, and yet I know intellectually
that generally equal part bad and good things happen over time.

This is an excellent example of a "good" thing which wasn't even considered in
papers and articles written about the coming antibiotic apocalypse. And it is
critically important for engineers and scientists to not give into the "all is
lost" mentality that the popular press uses to sell clicks and pageviews.

~~~
aerovistae
I would say the good things have gradually begun outweighing the bad in the
last two centuries. The world has made obvious visible progress on every
continent in countless metrics. Long way to go, but nonetheless.

~~~
ccvannorman
To further illustrate this reality, I point thee to Hans Rosling.

------
reasonattlm
A popular science article on the researchers who discovered the way to culture
the other 99% of soil bacteria:

[http://www.popsci.com/ichip-new-way-find-antibiotics-and-
oth...](http://www.popsci.com/ichip-new-way-find-antibiotics-and-other-key-
drugs)

"A team led by scientists from Northeastern University published a study
describing a new class of antibiotics called teixobactin, which they found in
the soil of a field in Maine. But what I found even more interesting than the
teixobactin discovery—which other writers have also pointed out—was how the
researchers were able to find it. They developed a device called an iChip,
which allows scientists to explore the virtually untapped wilds of bacteria
for potential antibiotics and other interesting unknown chemicals."

------
xyzzyz
That's very nice and uplifting, but it would be great if some sources were
provided. Like, who did the work? Where was it done? Where it was published?
As it is, it is next to impossible to look into further.

~~~
reasonattlm
I gave a popular science reference in another comment:

[http://www.popsci.com/ichip-new-way-find-antibiotics-and-
oth...](http://www.popsci.com/ichip-new-way-find-antibiotics-and-other-key-
drugs)

From that you should have enough keywords to chase up papers, labs, other
discussion, etc.

~~~
tim333
See also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10671637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10671637)

------
twinkletwinkle
Am I the only one who thought this part was weird?

 _" And as if that were not enough, here’s the kicker. This was not some kind
of massive high-throughput screen of the kind we so often hear about in
biomedical research these days. The researchers tried this approach just once,
in essentially their back yard, on a very small scale, and it STILL worked the
first time. What that tells us is that it can work again—and again, and
again"_

Why is the fact that it happened once, at a small scale, in a relatively
uncontrolled situation, supposed to engender confidence? The point of science
is doing it many times, at large scale, in a repeatable fashion. That's when
we have confidence in the way things work.

~~~
reasonattlm
Because they took it out for a short test drive and found a viable class of
antibiotic compounds without really trying very hard. That is something that
would have been expected to take years and a lot of money prior to their
advance.

It isn't just antibiotics. There are groups using this and analogous methods
based on the same conceptual breakthrough to mine the bacterial world for all
sorts of stuff, and now their efforts are about a hundred times more effective
and efficient.

~~~
carapace
Yes, exactly.

When you go fishing and the very moment your hook touches the water you catch
a big fat fish, well, that's probably one hell of a water hole.

And in this case they caught one hell of a fish.

------
Retric
One thing to consider is Antibiotics are not actually need very often. I had
intestional surgery a while back and they never put me on a course of
antibiotics. Now they probably gave me a shot of something in surgery, but we
can do a lot to minimize the risks without them.

They are often used as a crutch and end up promoting sloppy technique.
Basically infections are a sign you did something wrong, removing that
feedback promotes problems.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Basically infections are a sign you did something wrong, removing that
> feedback promotes problems.

Having surgery at all meets any standard of "you did something wrong".

~~~
Retric
Less so than you might think. Unless you want to suggest bad DNA is some how
your fault. However, I am speaking from the surgeons perspective.

~~~
thaumasiotes
In the sense of your comment, that "infections are a sign you did something
wrong", having surgery is "doing something wrong". Your body has no plan for
you to undergo surgery; it relies on the assumption that your skin separates
your inside from your outside and any contact between inside and outside _not_
mediated by your skin or your stomach is a catastrophic failure.

------
aab0
Anyone can find a drug which works in a petri dish. The real valley of death
for drugs is everything _after_ that. If ever a swallow did not make a
spring...

------
chetanahuja
It's a good news/bad news scenario. Good news is that we've potentially found
a new way to create antibiotics. The bad news is that it took us so long to
think of it and millions more might die of new diseases before we can finally
get efficacy at scale out of these techniques.

~~~
maxerickson
What new diseases? Antibiotic resistance is most problematic in old friends.

The good news is that we are still equipped with hygiene and an understanding
of what causes infection, which goes an awful long way towards limiting the
spread of it. In a historical context, both of those things are almost as new
as antibiotics themselves.

------
MaysonL
Obligatory George Carlin "fear of germs" link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnmMNdiCz_s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnmMNdiCz_s)

4th time posted to HN

------
mhkool
There are plenty of docters who treat a C diff infection with PRObiotics, i.e.
let good bacteries kill the bad bacteries. So do not worry and go to a doctor
that practises functional medicine.

