
A woman dies of a superbug resistant to every available antibiotic in the US - happy-go-lucky
https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/12/nevada-woman-superbug-resistant/
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mablap
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=superbug&sort=byPopularity&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=superbug&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=pastMonth&type=story)

This story has been posted a handful of times now. See link for other
discussions ^.

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anon363764
Necessary knee-jerking wake-up call: Antibiotics should be rationed, those
prescribed (after culturing) must be assured they are taken by some
automatic/interactive means and it should be a felony to pill-mill them for a
cold; otherwise, without rapid r&d, we're going to lose the survival arms
race.

~~~
k__
I saw a few articles last year that said something about new meds that can
replace antibiotics (or are even better antibiotics, I don't know), but they
aren't approved yet.

As far as I understand it, the problem here isn't that we lose an arms race
because we don't have alternatives, but because of our approval systems.

When enough antibiotics lost their effects, laws will probably be changed OR
it will take long enough till we got the alternatives in the marked.

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balls187
Let's be clear here, she was in her 70's and received a majority of her care
in India, not the US.

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nrjdhsbsid
And she had a bone infection, very hard to treat even without resistant
bacteria.

Let's be realistic here, she had the infection for YEARS... The odds are very
high that the bacteria started out fairly normal and became resistant over
time

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huhtenberg
From yesterday -

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13391886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13391886)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13402726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13402726)

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piyush_soni
I don't know why, but I have a faint hope that some day AI and Machine
learning will help solve these problems. Problems like these, and selectively
killing cancer cells. Of course, just a hope.

~~~
balls187
1 person out of 300,000,000 has died that's linked to drug resistant superbug.

Hardly a problem.

Of course AI could also just solve the problem by killing anyone who has
superbugs, so that the spread of such things is eradicated.

~~~
TomAnthony
The article mentions that this isn't the first such case. It is just a more
recent example.

Furthermore, there are multiple examples of bacteria that are resistant to
families of antibiotics, which indicates the direction of the trend.

If we don't consider it a problem now, when should we?

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arviewer
> If we don't consider it a problem now, when should we?

What we should, does not matter. When it starts to cost money, or when there
is an opportunity to earn money, then things will change.

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barrystaes
Bacteria are called bugs now? This calls for action.

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kgdinesh
And so it begins...

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atmosx
Nothing really _new_ for the pharmaceutical community tbh. The MRSA - which is
probably the most well known superbug - has been around for years and claimed
more deaths than AIDS per year in the US last time I checked.

There was an article pointing out that a techniques based on combination of
ATBs + Bacteriophages might be a possible replacement. Another possible
counter-measure is nano-tech.

If states do not jump-in funding various research groups, it's highly unlikely
that humanity will be given another "Aha!" moment a-la Fleming.

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sergiotapia
Next step is hopefully programmable nanobots. They use their tiny laser
blasters to surgically kill $BAD_CELLS.

Lots of examples of public research online: [http://www.sciencealert.com/new-
light-activated-nanoparticle...](http://www.sciencealert.com/new-light-
activated-nanoparticles-kill-over-90-of-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria)

Imagine what's military-grade and secret right now. The future is bright!

~~~
micaksica
> Imagine what's military-grade and secret right now.

I don't think this rule of thumb for technological advancement has held true
since the Cold War. Whatever nanobots are military grade and secret are likely
shitty prototypes that have cost billions over what was expected.

