
Antibiotic resistance now 'global threat', WHO warns - k-mcgrady
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27204988
======
doktrin
> _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.

~~~
justin66
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.

~~~
vonmoltke
> The worst case scenario for global warming is that it's an extinction-level
> event and civilization ends.

I don't buy that. Beginning of a new dark age with a breakdown of civilization
and loss of advancements? Yes. Extinction-level event? No.

> The worst case scenario for antibiotic resistance is that people live with
> the medical uncertainties our grandparents and great-grandparents lived
> with.

No, actually the worst case is that the antibiotic period breeds superbugs
that are both more virulent and harder to kill than those that came before.
Antibiotic resistance comes about because of unintentional selective breeding
of bacteria. We don't really know what other traits we are unintentionally
selecting for. We could potentially be breeding a wordwide pandemic and not
realize it. Which could bring about a new dark age with a breakdown of
civilization and loss of advancements.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I don't know how you plan to live in a world where outside its hot enough to
melt lead.

~~~
doktrin
Please point to a single climate model that predicts air temperatures will
rise to 300+ degrees _celsius_.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Venus.

~~~
vonmoltke
While Venus' atmosphere is worth study, due to the theory that it underwent
some sort of hyperactive climate change a few billion years ago, there are
limits to the comparison:

\- Venus is about 3/4 the distance from the Sun as Earth.

\- Venus has slow, retrograde rotation that leaves a given portion of the
surface exposed to the Sun for 56 Earth days at a time.

\- Venus has no magnetic field, which causes the loss of water vapor and other
light gases due to the solar wind

------
mullingitover
Oddly enough, I can't find a single reference to farms using antibiotics as a
growth enhancer in this article. Isn't that the single biggest source of
antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

~~~
anigbrowl
Agricultural use of antibiotics has definitely been an issue, but perhaps
they're trying to state narrow conclusions in the name of scientific rigor.
Fortunately, in the US at least, the practice is being discontinued.
[http://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/guidancecomplianceenforc...](http://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/guidancecomplianceenforcement/guidanceforindustry/ucm216939.htm)

~~~
zach
Not everyone is so sanguine about the effect of the FDA's action. For example,
NY Times food writer Mark Bittman:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/opinion/bittman-the-
fdas-n...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/opinion/bittman-the-fdas-not-
really-such-good-news.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&)

In California, though, there is much stronger action stirring in the state
legislature, although it will need far more public support to become a
possibility:

[http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Ban-sought-on-animal-
an...](http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Ban-sought-on-animal-antibiotics-
as-human-5439995.php)

------
jmcmichael
One alternative to antibiotics that may work, but will have a tremendous
difficulty in clearing the regulatory burden for approving new drugs and
medical procedures, is bacteriophage therapy.[1]

Nobody's going to fund or approve this in the West anytime soon:

\- phage therapists often use cocktails of phages to treat their patient. This
type of treatment isn't even on the FDA's map - it even takes years for
compounds of conventional drugs to be approved.

\- phage therapists often prepare customized phage cultures to treat a
specific patient's infection. The FDA would likely view this a a crime and
prosecute anyone trying it.

\- phage therapies have been around for over 100 years and are likely
unpatentable. No drug company will fund R&D on the technique and no venture
capitalist will fund a scrappy startup.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy)

~~~
DennisP
Then maybe we should change the way we regulate medical treatments. And maybe
how we fund some of the research.

------
chris_va
(source: doing research into this)

For those with a computational/hacker background wanting to make a difference:

There is actually a lot of opportunity in the Computational Biology/Drug
Development/Genomics space, with the caveat that it is a very difficult field
(especially for company creation). It's a lot easier for CS folks to build
another no-SQL database than it is to build a ML framework for, say, cancer
prediction, but the opportunity is there. A lot of folks in this space come
from the bio side, and teach themselves programming. Very few folks come from
the CS side, and partner with the biologists. As a result, there is a giant
gap between what is possible for a computer scientist and what is currently
being executed. The state of the art in this space will probably make you all
very sad.

I will pay $$ for engineers to work on this:

I have a side project working with an academic lab to develop a new antibiotic
to target drug resistant beta lactamase (the primary protein associated with
drug resistance) using a relatively novel computational approach. Sadly I've
been distracted by my primary job, but if you are interested let me know. I am
based in SF.

~~~
Houshalter
It's something I am interested in getting into, but I don't even know where to
start.

------
swombat
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?

~~~
coenhyde
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
> 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
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
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.

------
jmzbond
I think to make a dent in this problem we need to change many aspects of our
culture and how we live: 1) that any annoying problem should have an immediate
and rapid solution so that we can get on with our lives, 2) that we as people
need to live in a bubble ecosystem from the rest of the natural world.

1) I stopped taking most medicines awhile ago because I realized that by
relying on symptomatic relief, I wasn't actually listening to the needs of my
body. Now when I feel a cold coming on, I start sleeping at 9pm, eat
healthier, and reduce stress levels. Instead of popping a pill, I've learned
to recognize that I'm deviating from "healthy" activity and had better get on
track. The result? I haven't been sick in years and years, and am probably
overall a more healthy, less stressed out person.

2) I often wonder to what degree language affects perception. Like the word
dirty having such a negative stereotype yet so associated with dirt (i.e.,
soil). I feel like we often want such high levels of sterility that are just
absurd, and do more to harm us in the long run. As part of a project, I
interviewed farmers who said food safety experts are so draconian they expect
cannons that shoot into the air to prevent birds from flying over with the
risk of droppings. One food safety inspector commented that the farm was too
"dirty." Can you imagine? I understand we don't want to get sick, there are
bad things in the world, but I think we're pushing too far into the other end
of the spectrum.

------
luckyno13
The threat we now are facing with these resistant strains of bacteria are the
main reason I got interested in the Public Health field. I am only in my
second semester, going part time, but look forward to trying to address the
growing need for infectious treatment "reform."

~~~
dopkew
We may eventually need to have a compulsory hospital stay (or something else)
for antibiotic treatment so that a patient treated with an antibiotic does not
have any leftover resistant pathogens to transfer to the public.

~~~
Fomite
Given the amount of antibiotic resistant bugs that live in hospitals, I'm
highly skeptical that _longer_ hospital stays will result in _decreased_
colonization with resistant species.

------
majkinetor
Antibiotic resistance is a fact, what else can you expect given the game
rules. What is less well known is that majority of people do not need
antibiotics anyway and that majority of those who were taking them probably
didn't need them too. Advice that recommended AB's before for stuff like
otitis, helicobacter infection or even common cold (given for this disease
because of opportunistic infections) is now changing without any problems, if
anything, for the better.

AB's should be saved for those few moments in life where you really need them
and is not something you want to do every few months like majority of people,
particularly kids.

There are far better ways to strengthen your body and immune system without
risks that are overwhelming with AB's (which are way better known today after
we have some bits of microbiome) - nutrition and supplements. Even measures
like using viruses as antibiotics are probably better then popping AB's like
candies.

This news is probably beginning of the "next big big pharma thingy" that will
come to rescue and will typically, yet again, use inappropriate tool for the
job. The only good that will come out of it are probably not going to be,
however, lives saved but science advancement.

------
tokenadult
Here is a link to the World Health Organization media release[1] about the new
WHO report, which links to a fact sheet summary[2] of the findings, and to the
full report.[3] What's new here is the comparative data from different
countries. It has been known for a while that multidrug-resistant tuberculosis
is a grave problem in India,[4] for example, but the new report makes clear
that antibiotic-resistant microorganisms that cause major human disease are
present all over the world.

Some of the other comments posted here ask, well, what can we do about this? A
submission to Hacker News from 189 days ago linked to a PBS report about the
views of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist in the
United States[5] who advocated specific policy changes, some of which have
been adopted since then. The discussion of that submission (including one of
my highest-karma-ever comments[6]) provides more perspective on some
biological evolution issues that are being brought up again in today's
discussion here.

[1] [http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/amr-
report...](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/amr-report/en/)

[2]
[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs194/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs194/en/)

[3]
[http://www.who.int/drugresistance/documents/surveillancerepo...](http://www.who.int/drugresistance/documents/surveillancereport/en/)

[4]
[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230344420...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303444204577460734274201756)

[http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news...](http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-23/news/40134749_1_stop-
tb-department-mario-raviglione-jmm-meeting)

[http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of-
Drug-R...](http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2012/Facing-the-Reality-of-Drug-
Resistant-Tuberculosis-Challenges-and-Potential-Solutions-in-India.aspx)

[http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/pdfs/RNTCP%20Response%20DR%20TB%2...](http://www.tbcindia.nic.in/pdfs/RNTCP%20Response%20DR%20TB%20in%20India%20-%20Jan%202012%20update.pdf)

[5]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6599040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6599040)

[6]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6599795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6599795)

~~~
chez17
In America, the number one thing you can do is stop eating factory farmed
meat. That is a huge contributor to antibiotics resistance. Either eat mainly
vegan or spend the few extra dollars to buy meat that isn't gross. Remember,
it is MORE EXPENSIVE in the long run to buy that cheap meat. When you have a
routine infection that can't be cured with antibiotics, the hospital bills
will be far more then the few dollars you saved. Eat less meat. Oh, and you'll
massively reduce your carbon footprint as well, and you'll use less land and
water, and you'll be healthier (if you cut out red meat). It really is a no
brainer.

~~~
joelrunyon
> Eat less meat.

I never understand how "Stop eating factory farmed meat" means you have to
"eat less meat" \- why not just eat better sourced high quality meat?

It seems especially strange in a place like HN where you'd think that
supporting the alternative grass-fed, non-factory farmers would be the
entrepreneurial thing (and encourage more farmers to do it).

Meat is not the problem. The quality of the meat is. There are ways to solve
that problem outside of eating less meat.

~~~
chongli
_why not just eat better sourced high quality meat?_

Because it's more expensive. Most people can't afford to eat large amounts of
high quality meat.

~~~
Qantourisc
Luckily people don't need _large_ amounts of meat.

~~~
chongli
Right, I agree. I was merely responding to the parent's assertion that people
just go ahead and eat as much meat as they do now but make it higher quality.

------
kayoone
So every few weeks we get these news but this isn't reversible anyway i guess.
Does this basically mean a lot more people will die from simple infections
starting 1-2 years from now ? How likely is it that new antibiotics will be
developed ? By reading articles like these it sounds like we are facing a
massive increase in deaths from illnesses, yet the general public doesn't seem
to care much. Genuinely curious.

~~~
refurb
_Does this basically mean a lot more people will die from simple infections
starting 1-2 years from now ?_

No, the problem is not that severe right now. In fact, some of the antibiotic
resistant infections have decreased over the last few years.

This is something we need to worry about 5-10+ years from now. It is
inevitable that bacteria will become resistant to current antibiotics. The
only way to keep ahead of them is to create new antibiotics.

~~~
midas007
Exactly. But because of the difficulty, time and capital requirements, this is
something that can't be left to the market economics. It will be too late by
the time we need them because of the years it takes to develop a single new
drug. This is a "going to the moon" type thing that needs to happen if we
intend to survive. Because that's what's at stake.

~~~
refurb
Two comments:

(1) You say it can't be left up to market economics, but two of the big
hurdles to new antibiotic development are government regulations: (I) In the
past the FDA was not very responsive to the resistance problem, if you had a
new drug, you went through a normal review; luckily they have changed their
approach recently (II) The way that Medicare and Medicaid pays for antibiotics
doesn't encourage investment in novel agents

(2) I have to push back on the "going to the moon" type thing. This is more
like we've already been to the moon and we need to go back and do something
different. Drug companies know how to develop new antibiotics (not to say it's
easy, but they have ideas) and they know how to get them approved. There are
new discoveries all the time. We just need to create an ecosystem that
encourages further investment.

~~~
midas007
Edge cases. The big picture is that it's not happening fast enough, which is
why the government will need to step in and will need to assume a leadership
role to push hard on this.

~~~
refurb
That's not going to happen. The gov't will change the regulatory and
reimbursement environment but the heavy lifting will be done by academic and
pharmaceutical researchers.

------
denzil_correa
Isn't (one of the reasons) this due to _excessive_ use of antibiotics?

~~~
luckyno13
Yes, excessive use in not only humans, but in livestock.

~~~
majkinetor
You are wrong. Excessive use in livestock contributes a lot given that 40% of
worlds AB's are used for growth promotion and we eat that junk.

~~~
skj
When you say "You are wrong.", that indicates that you disagree. But the rest
of your comment indicates that you agree. Could you clarify?

~~~
majkinetor
Ah, I misread that, didn't see that tiny "not". Yes, he is right :)

------
HarryHirsch
Another worrying development: Pfizer buying Astra-Zeneca.

It's not to streamline drug development, the deal is a tax dodge in its
entirety. Some lovely commentary down the hallway, in the Pipeline:
[http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/04/28/pfizer_and_a...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/04/28/pfizer_and_astrazeneca_what_the_hell.php)

Scientists worry about the cuts to NIH funding, but the cuts to pharmaceutical
research are ten times more worrying - who is going to develop the compounds
to replace the current set of antibiotics when they have become useless? Wall
Street is entirely unequipped to deal with this question; there are things
that cannot be bought with money or at market, and scientific progress is one
of them.

~~~
refurb
Pfizer got out of antibacterial R&D a few years back.

And I have to take issue with your comment "scientific progress can't be
bought with money". What do you call all the new drugs that have been produced
in the last century? It wasn't done by the government. Yes, basic research
funded by the NIH advanced basic science, but it didn't put those pills in a
bottle.

------
ams6110
I have long thought that humans (at least those living in the first world) had
developed civilization to a point where natural selection was not really
operating anymore. We can shelter ourselves, feed ourselves, and cure
illnesses and injuries so well that almost all of us live to reproduce and
raise our children to the point where they can take care of themselves. We
haven't even had a large-scale war in the time that most of us have been
alive. But on evolutionary timescales, we've really lived this way for only
the blink of an eye. So maybe I'm wrong. This is a reminder that we live in a
larger ecosystem that we really have a lot less control over than we might
think. Nature has a way of keeping things in balance, and it's never pretty.

------
melling
Isn't this caused because some countries make antibiotics easily accessible
without a doctor?

~~~
cstross
Yes; there are perverse disincentives built into the profit mechanism
underpinning the commercial pharmaceutical industry.

Patents on antibiotics last no longer than on any other type of medicine (20
years, minus the substantial time taken to test it, jump through regulatory
hoops, and bring it to market -- typically 8-14 years). The cost of meeting
those regulatory prerequisites is measured in the hundreds of millions of
dollars in the USA alone -- more if you want to get a product license
everywhere worldwide. So you need to earn back several hundred million bucks
in profit in a single-digit period of years ...

But antibiotics are unprofitable. A typical AB course lasts 5-14 days after
which the patient is completely cured. Compare with antidepressants or ADHD
drugs -- where you get a customer for life! Which would _you_ invest in, if
you were in that business -- a product 10% of the population will use annually
for a week, or a product 10% of the population will be hooked on for life?

It's not a coincidence that research into new antibiotics ground to a halt in
the 1970s around the time that the regulatory barriers to entry rose so high
that small and medium scale pharmaceutical companies were frozen out of the
business and the surviving operators were the large conglomerates.

(Disclaimer: wearing my ex-pharmacist hat here.)

~~~
dopkew
I saw a documentary in which it was said that another disincentive to
antibiotic research is that its very use causes its effectiveness (for the
general population) to reduce, due to antibiotic resistance. So that it would
eventually stop selling.

It is not so in the case of medicines for BP, diabetes etc.

We may eventually need to have a compulsory hospital stay (or something else)
for antibiotic treatment so that a patient treated with an antibiotic does not
have any leftover resistant pathogens to transfer to the public.

------
Orangeair
Is there any particular reason we can't just create new antibiotics? Is there
something inherent in the current design of antibiotics that prevents creating
new versions of what we have? If so, is there an 'upper limit' of how many we
can create, and have we reached it already?

~~~
spuz
Most antibiotics are not created but discovered. They are often species of
fungus or other microorganisms that happen to attack certain kinds of
bacteria. Take any place on earth where you might find microorganisms, grow
them in a culture and then test their effects until you find one with the
desired properties (kills bacteria but not human cells) and then you might be
able to develop a new drug from it. The problem is we're running out of places
to scoop up microorganisms from and the newest drugs are being made from fungi
found deep in the most inaccessible caves underground for which bacteria above
ground has not developed a resistance to. It's an evolutionary arms race which
we're ultimately destined to lose which is why we need to find better ways of
killing bacteria.

~~~
mullingitover
Couldn't evolution be accelerated in the lab? If the bacteria can evolve a way
to thwart a fungus' defense, wouldn't it stand to reason that the fungi could
evolve a new defense as well?

------
mvembu
Homeopathy offers remedies for antibiotic resistant infections. I had a
relative who had severe infection post knee replacement surgery. She was
operated 4 times due to this infection as the bacteria is considered
antibiotic resistant. A classical homeopath treated her to recover from the
infection.

This is the bacteria that caused the post surgery infection

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acinetobacter_baumannii](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acinetobacter_baumannii)

Here is a relevant article on how Homeopathy provides an alternative to
antibiotics

[http://aurumproject.org.au/homeopathy-alternative-
antibiotic...](http://aurumproject.org.au/homeopathy-alternative-antibiotics/)

------
patrickdavey
Yip, this is definitely a serious threat, one that will affect the rich in
ways that climate change won't so immediately do. Probably a good thing in
terms of finding a solution ;)

I did come across (I forget where) a very interesting talk which was outlining
new techniques in antibiotics. The basic idea was that instead of straight out
killing them (in which some breed resistance) instead you get in the middle of
their chemical signals and basically tell them to attach before they've
reached the point where the immune system won't win.

Still, bacteria being bacteria they'll probably work their way around it, but
maybe rewriting your messaging system is a little harder than breeding
resistance.

------
lightblade
Instead of developing more antibiotics, can we reengineer these disease
bacterias with a kill switch built in? Then release them into the wild to
compete with non-engineered species and eventually displace them?

~~~
slinkyavenger
You would have to also engineer an evolutionary advantage - something that
would make them likelier to survive in the wild than their non-engineered
counterparts. Building in a 'kill switch' by its very nature gives engineered
bacteria a huge disadvantage, meaning there'd have to be something else making
them more likely to reproduce.

It would probably be a better use of time engineering the bacteria to be
harmless to humans, negating the need for a course of drugs to kill it off.

------
midas007
On a personal note, my mom is still under the weather, having stuck to three
different courses of antibiotics for a simple nasal infection.

It's frightening when this becomes the norm, not the exception because we're
basically running out of options by natural selection moving faster than
research.

We need a crash program to develop antibiotics before it's too late.

------
gabriel34
I would like to know why wouldn't it work to simply flood hospital rooms (any
time they were empty) with lethal (for bacteria) doses of non-ionizing
radiation (or any kind that doesn't go through walls and don't make said walls
radioactive) so that those pesky tolerant strains have a really hard time
propagating

~~~
refurb
Most of the transmission of infections is from human to human contact. Yes,
bacteria can reside on equipment and facilities, but we have adequate measures
to deal with that.

As an interesting aside, more and more copper is being used in medical
equipment as it is naturally antibacterial.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_cop...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_copper)

------
ScotterC
What are the limiters to creating new, stronger antibiotics to beat the
resistant strains?

~~~
jacquesm
The one limit seems to be that even if we did that the bacteria will evolve to
become resistant against those as well. This is a game of leap-frog, we've
been ahead for a while, now we'll be behind for a while and so on.

Think of it as a very slow arms race where on the one side there is
intelligence and design and on the other there is the lottery driven mechanism
of evolution that rewards the solver of the newly posed problem with a very
large number of offspring.

The sides are surprisingly well matched and short of total eradication this is
likely going to be the game for the next foreseeable future.

The bigger challenge will be to restrain ourselves to consume much more
limited amounts if and when we do find antibiotics that work again in order to
lengthen the time that we're 'on top'.

~~~
midas007
That's part of it, but this is something governments have to take leadership
on right now. That will only happen with direct pressure. Waiting until it's
the leading cause of death will be too late, because of drug development
pipeline timeframes.

------
3rd3
There are multiple kinds of antibiotics, right? Couldn’t one globally rotate
the different kinds of antibiotics so that germs have a harder time adapting
to it?

~~~
refurb
Not really. Resistant strains of bacterial exist everywhere. Every area in the
world needs the full range of current antibacterials.

The other thing to remember is international travel. It's pretty easy for
someone in North America, who has a resistant bacterial infection, to hope on
a plane and spread it around Europe.

------
k-mcgrady
Are there any potential alternatives to antibiotics? For example could
nanotechnology be used?

~~~
majkinetor
Yes, bunch of alternatives:

\- bacteriophages (viruses that kill bacteria) \- vitamin C for some bacteria,
vitamin D, other supplements like MSM. Most must be used in megadoses for this
effect. \- plant AB's (onion, black pepper, curcumin, the list is enormous and
probably infinite)

~~~
jmpe
There's a very good documentary about bacteriophages:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6sZ7E9Hh-Y](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6sZ7E9Hh-Y)

It's history is muddied, mainly because of money & politics.

~~~
majkinetor
Apart from 'sacred rivers' the best known example is probably your mouth -
viruses do kill majority bacteria there until you start to adopt non-natural
cleaning systems (i.e. toothpaste) and carb overflowing you are actually
making thing worse.

------
RV86
Best case scenario is that we find a way to get back in front of the
mutations, but even that would just be buying time before the bacteria adapted
again. On a long time scale, it's hubris to think we can stay in front
indefinitely. We'd be better off improving our relationship with/attitude
toward death on the whole.

------
volune
time to buy an auto-clave

~~~
MichaelGG
Sterilizing things you own is unlikely to help. You'd reduce any naturally
acquired resistance, yet still remain vulnerable to getting infected from the
entire world you cannot sanitize.

