# A post-antibiotic world coming?



## Brian G Turner (Nov 19, 2015)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34857015



> The world is on the cusp of a "post-antibiotic era", scientists have warned after finding bacteria resistant to drugs used when all other treatments have failed.
> 
> They identified bacteria able to shrug off the drug of last resort - colistin - in patients and livestock in China.
> 
> ...



I still don't understand why routine antibiotic use is allowed in any livestock. IMO that practice should have long been banned. I find it astonishing that it remains accepted - let alone tolerated - anywhere in the world.


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 19, 2015)

Fleming in 1945 or 1946 warned about this (perhaps at Nobel speech too?).
I discussed this with my GP in 1980s, he being the kind that only prescribed antibiotics if he thought they needed. He thought it was a war we were doomed to lose, but that agriculture, bossy patients and lazy doctors were making us lose faster.
Antibiotics have saved a lot of lives since 1940s. Yet we waste them.
Bacteriophages will help with some bacteria.
Less hygiene helps too. In a hospital if surfaces are cleaned with bactericide and windows are closed, then dangerous bacteria easily colonise. If "germ laden" air is let in and surfaces only normally washed then the amount of benign and harmless bacteria means the evil ones can't grow.

Most bacteria are harmless or even benign. Too much cleansing of body & house makes children more prone to allergies and allows easier growth of nasty bacteria from an infection etc.

Use soap and water, not bactericide sprays and hand-washes in the home. Only wash private bits and sweaty bits. A full shower every day is bad for you!

The theory is that HUGE rise in allergies etc in USA is due to over obsession with cleaning and showers in last 60 years.


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 19, 2015)

Brian Turner said:


> I still don't understand why routine antibiotic use is allowed in any livestock


Money!
They are used as growth promoters!


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## Brian G Turner (Nov 19, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> Money!
> They are used as growth promoters!



Not so much growth promoters - some have hormone supplements for that. The antibiotics are basically because the livestock are housed in such cramped and unhygienic conditions that disease becomes rife. Antibiotics are therefore routinely provided, because it's much cheaper to risk the health and well-being of humanity, than care properly for the health and well-being of animals. The industrial farming of animals personally disgusts me.


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 19, 2015)

Brian Turner said:


> some have hormone supplements for that.


In USA. Such meat not allowed even to be imported to EU, or at least that was the case till recently.
For calves it's purely marketed as growth promoter. I use the local Agri Co-op vetinary counter to buy nearly all my hardware.


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## Dave (Nov 19, 2015)

Brian Turner said:


> I still don't understand why routine antibiotic use is allowed in any livestock. IMO that practice should have long been banned. I find it astonishing that it remains accepted - let alone tolerated - anywhere in the world.


I don't either, but I expect it is like nuclear arms or climate change deals. No one will make a move without another going first.


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 19, 2015)

See also
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151118-can-you-be-too-clean

EDIT BBC R4 NEWS

EU banned use as Growth promoter in 2006. So the continued high usage reflects badly on Vets and the Drug Industry as well as farmers as you need a Veterinary prescription.


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## J Riff (Nov 19, 2015)

No way to be too clean with my roomie...... thank gord for hydrogen peroxide and baking soda.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 29, 2015)

Diseases become resistant  to  antibiotic is a mess of our own making. The long term consequences are going to be very dire indeed.


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## mosaix (Nov 29, 2015)

My sister's, husband's, sister's husband is French. He visited a couple of years back and whilst here contracted a bad cold. He went to the docs and demanded antibiotics. The doc refused - no good against a virus etc. He was furious, his French doc gives them for colds he said. I don't know if this was just his doc or if it's widespread practice in France.

Anyway, the news is worrying. Twice in my life I've been given antibiotics for life threatening infections that would have probably killed me if they weren't available or were ineffective.


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## Brian G Turner (Dec 8, 2015)

Farmers urged to cut antibiotic use

There seems little point expecting that the meat industry - with their record of CJD, Foot-and-mouth disease, and mislabelled horse meat - will be willing, or able, to regulate itself on the issue of reducing anti-biotic use.

David Cameron has campaigned before about the need to address the dangers of a post-antibiotic world - perhaps it's time that he and other politicians took a hard stance against the intensive farming meat industry.

Quoting from the above BBC piece:



> In the US alone, every year, 3,400 tonnes of antibiotics are used on patients, while 8,900 tonnes are used on animals.



Food for thought.


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## mosaix (Dec 8, 2015)

Brian Turner said:


> Farmers urged to cut antibiotic use
> 
> There seems little point expecting that the meat industry - with their record of CJD, Foot-and-mouth disease, and mislabelled horse meat - will be willing, or able, to regulate itself on the issue of reducing anti-biotic use.



Self-regulation hardly ever works. It's usually implemented by Governments not willing to spend the money or parliamentary time bringing in effective laws.


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## thaddeus6th (Dec 8, 2015)

I heard somewhere or other that antibiotics aren't used that much over here. It's mostly a US thing. Of course, diseases and resistance are international.


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## Nick B (Dec 8, 2015)

This has been a long time coming indeed. We are too worried about cleanliness and not enough about health. Antibacterial everything is crazy, 99% of bacteria are in the harmless or beneficial catagory. Anti bacterial handwash kills all of them. Antibiotics kill the beneficial bacteria in your body as well as the harmful.
And now you can buy antibacterial laundry detergent. Great.

The meat industry however may be the largest factor in antibiotics becoming useless. And that is purely about money.


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## Brian G Turner (Dec 10, 2015)

Oops - too late. Apparently, it has already begun:
Resistance to last-resort antibiotic has now spread across globe



> THE final drug has fallen. Bacteria carrying a gene that allows them to resist our last-resort antibiotics, called polymyxins, have been found in Denmark and China.
> 
> The discovery means bacteria that cause common gut, urinary and blood infections in humans can now become resistant to all antibiotics available – making some infections incurable without new ones.


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## Mirannan (Dec 11, 2015)

Quellist said:


> This has been a long time coming indeed. We are too worried about cleanliness and not enough about health. Antibacterial everything is crazy, 99% of bacteria are in the harmless or beneficial catagory. Anti bacterial handwash kills all of them. Antibiotics kill the beneficial bacteria in your body as well as the harmful.
> And now you can buy antibacterial laundry detergent. Great.
> 
> The meat industry however may be the largest factor in antibiotics becoming useless. And that is purely about money.



Yep. Two more points about that are first, that many antibacterial compounds (parabens for example) have weak oestrogenic effects that play havoc with the hormone systems of (for example) children and second, that there is a fair amount of evidence that an immune system under insufficient stress in early life leads to increases in all manner of immune-related problems such as asthma. At least the second has been tested; dead soil bacteria injected under the skin of asthmatic children quite often reduce asthma symptoms substantially.


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## BAYLOR (Dec 11, 2015)

Brian Turner said:


> Oops - too late. Apparently, it has already begun:
> Resistance to last-resort antibiotic has now spread across globe




God help us all.


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## BAYLOR (Dec 11, 2015)

Mirannan said:


> Yep. Two more points about that are first, that many antibacterial compounds (parabens for example) have weak oestrogenic effects that play havoc with the hormone systems of (for example) children and second, that there is a fair amount of evidence that an immune system under insufficient stress in early life leads to increases in all manner of immune-related problems such as asthma. At least the second has been tested; dead soil bacteria injected under the skin of asthmatic children quite often reduce asthma symptoms substantially.



The coming of a global pandemic which could in effect drastically reduce our population, maybe to the point of extinction. I keep thinking of that documentary* Life after Us *with an empty world of decaying buildings and nature  reclaiming  the world with a vengeance. Could that be our future? If so it's not a happy thought .


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## hopewrites (Dec 11, 2015)

My partner just read me a new story about resistant fleas.
Normal flea treatments are ineffective against the new wave fleas who have developed resistant to Frontline and Advantage...

Grrreeeaaat...


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## Droflet (Dec 11, 2015)

Yep, it's like Baylor said. We're way overdue for a pandemic. Decades of relying on the same chemicals will come back to bite us all. Germs, it appears, are smarter and more adaptable than humans.


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## WaylanderToo (Dec 11, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> A full shower every day is bad for you!




that is as may be - however it feels sooooooooooo _*good*_!


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## hopewrites (Dec 11, 2015)

I think once there is money in antibiotics again that pharmaceuticals will happily turn their attention there and come up with the next solution.


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## Droflet (Dec 11, 2015)

Sadly there won't be money in it until it's too late.


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## Nick B (Dec 11, 2015)

We lived pre-antibiotic, we will survive post-antibiotic. Well, the strong will anyway. Then new drugs will be created.


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## thaddeus6th (Dec 11, 2015)

Quellist, that's basically my view. 

Whilst this is bad, it's not something that will destroy the species. On a local level, there could be massive death tolls occasionally, and more common (but lower) losses from other diseases. 

New antibiotics shouldn't be prescribed like Smarties or fed to cattle, though...


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## Droflet (Dec 11, 2015)

I get what you guys are saying, but perhaps you haven't read the predictions from the WHO. No we won't die as a species but millions perhaps billions will die. Why? Because no one wants to address the issue. Our time is running out folks. Just saying.


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## Nick B (Dec 11, 2015)

I understand WHO also predicted ebola would spread worldwide. And swine flu would kill millions. And bird flu would kill millions. 

Stop being afraid and live life instead.


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## thaddeus6th (Dec 11, 2015)

And SARS, Quellist.

Whilst I agree there's been crying wolf over such things, it's worth remembering that the wolf did eventually appear. We should have stricter guidelines for new antibiotics to prevent their excessive use.


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## Nick B (Dec 11, 2015)

Make it illegal to use them for anything except medical use, and stop handing them out like sweets.


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## Dave (Dec 11, 2015)

hopewrites said:


> I think once there is money in antibiotics again that pharmaceuticals will happily turn their attention there and come up with the next solution.


I don't think so. These antibiotics came from Fungi and they have now exhausted all species that exist on Earth.


Quellist said:


> I understand WHO also predicted ebola would spread worldwide.


Ebola doesn't spread very easily (or it would have already.) The reason that it spread in Africa was a cultural one of relatives washing the dead before burial. And that isn't all, see this - How the Fight Against Ebola Tested a Culture’s Traditions



Quellist said:


> And swine flu would kill millions. And bird flu would kill millions.


We are still overdue for a new Influenza pandemic. It wasn't those, but when the next flu virus makes the species jump we will see many more deaths than we were used to seeing. Spanish flu actually began in the trenches in the First World War but the Government suppressed news of the deaths. It went on to devastate populations in Greenland and India, where there was no resistance to it. Today, if you are a baby boomer you have probably built up some resistance over your life to the most common types of flu around, so unless you are very young, very old or infirm it is unlikely to kill you. A new strain would be entirely different, and being a virus, antibiotics are not going to help either.


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## Nick B (Dec 11, 2015)

I know flu is a virus, i was using it as one of the times we have been told to be afraid for our health. But we are bombarded with things we should worry about. Disease, terrorism, war, take your pick.
We are overdue a pandemic. We are overdue a supervolcano. We are overdue a polar shift. We are overdue (take your pick of apocalyptic event). Its all we hear.

Be fit. Be healthy. Look after yourself and those you love. Try not to die of stupidity and you may just make it through the night.


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## Mirannan (Dec 11, 2015)

Quellist said:


> Make it illegal to use them for anything except medical use, and stop handing them out like sweets.



Yup, pretty obvious - although I think using them on animals that are actually ill is also legitimate. The real problem comes when antibiotics are given routinely to animals which are packed far too tightly, as a prophylactic, and even more so when they are given as growth promoters.

One problem with finding out which antibiotic would be best before prescribing is that bacterial cultures take time to grow; the infection might well get much worse while waiting for the results.


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## BAYLOR (Dec 11, 2015)

Quellist said:


> We lived pre-antibiotic, we will survive post-antibiotic. Well, the strong will anyway. Then new drugs will be created.



And the whole thing will start all over again.


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## Nick B (Dec 11, 2015)

It must be so nice living in unhappy land.


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## hopewrites (Dec 11, 2015)

I can't remember where I read it or I would Link, but I've heard that pharmaceutical companies have the capacity to produce more effective antibiotics, and don't because there's "no money in it"

If the major farms are dosing their animals, that's money. 

On the other end of the spectrum I've heard it rumored that vaccines are used to decimate biological warfair style illness from disreputable distributors. That one is outside plausibility if not possibility. As the parties wanting to decimate their biological weapons would have to bribe or trick the distribution center into taking on the blame when the deaths started pointing back. I doubt more that a few dozen would be needed for a trace and recall. Not worth the loss of reputation the center would suffer, as no pharmacist would order anything from them (or their subsidiaries) ever again.


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## thaddeus6th (Dec 12, 2015)

Hopewrites, I heard something similar. Apparently, it's because the pharmaceutical firms weren't given enough cash to justify the prolonged R&D necessary, so it's more economic for them to work on other things.


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## Dave (Dec 12, 2015)

Quellist said:


> It must be so nice living in unhappy land.


Not everyone has the luxury of good health. There are many people who must have catheters and various other tubes coming out of small holes cut in their bodies or else they will die. That land isn't a very distant shore for those people and I apologise to them for your flippant remarks. They need antibiotics that will still work or else these open wounds, or their organs, will be infected by staphylococcus aureus. That bacteria lives up your nose and in other orifices, and is carried on your skin, face and on your hands. MRSA are strains of this bacteria that are now resistant to antibiotics. It just stands for meticillin-resistant _Staphylococcus aureus_. It is everywhere outside of hospitals and on the unwashed hands and clothes of hospital patients' visitors. There is a war on and we are losing every battle against it. You can believe that officials are over-hyping the danger if you wish, but there are people who have seen relatives die from these infections, and others who must live every day with the consequences of drug-resistant bacteria.


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## Nick B (Dec 12, 2015)

I know only too well what these things are Dave, I work in health care. I work with people with cathaters, stoma's, breathing aparatus and most other things you can think of. I work with physical and mental disabilities. I work with mental health issues. I administer a myriad of drugs on a daily basis. I see the nhs treat people with disabilities as second rate. I see the general populous shy away from things they do not understand. 
I know what methicilin resistant staphylococcus aureus is. In know what clostridium difficile is, and that it has claimed more lives than mrsa,  but the media didnt pick it as flavour of the day.
I have cared for people as they die, seen people die from easily treated conditions because a doctor wouldnt listen.
I deal with sh*t and p*ss and vomit, clean it up then get punched for my trouble because some of the people i care for can be violent. I have been threatened with death, abused by people I am helping, put in hospital with a suspected broken neck, all for less pay than I would earn at tesco.

Dont ever patronise me. I didnt agree with the authorities, or play thehr words down. I simply do not bow to the media hysteria that follows bad news. I wasnt being cold hearted by saying that the strong will survive, it is a fact. When the antibiotics go, it will be the weak who die. Those with health problems. Those with weaker systems.
The people I care for.
Do not take my words and try to make me seem the lesser person.


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## Brian G Turner (Dec 21, 2015)

Completely anti-biotic resistant bacteria, including Salmonella and E. Coli, have now been found to exist on British farms:
Bacteria that resist 'last antibiotic' in UK - BBC News


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## BAYLOR (Dec 22, 2015)

Brian Turner said:


> Completely anti-biotic resistant bacteria, including Salmonella and E. Coli, have now been found to exist on British farms:
> Bacteria that resist 'last antibiotic' in UK - BBC News




Imagine what nightmare that's going be for things like food handling and preparation ?


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## Dave (Dec 22, 2015)

BAYLOR said:


> Imagine what nightmare that's going be for things like food handling and preparation ?


Not necessarily "a nightmare," but harder work, yes. What it calls for is better hygiene practices. I don't mean by that more anti-bacterial sprays and hand-washes, just good old-fashioned, frequent hand-washing with soap, and tidy kitchens, work-surfaces, farms, hospitals - tidy means putting labelled things away in the right place, cleaning up spillages immediately and regular scheduled cleaning regimes. Cooking will kill bacteria but you need to separate cooked from raw food, and not place cooked food underneath raw or chop on the same boards. All hygiene, food hygiene or otherwise, is really just common sense. It is harder to work like that and it takes longer, but it is safer. We have the advantage today of knowing what the enemy is and how it operates. When Londoners were still dying of Cholera and Typhoid they thought it was caused by a bad smell.


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## Nick B (Dec 22, 2015)

BAYLOR said:


> Imagine what nightmare that's going be for things like food handling and preparation ?


It shouldn't make any difference at all, anyone involved in food handling and preperation should already be working to safe standards. No antibiotics are used in food preperation.


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## Vertigo (Dec 22, 2015)

The post-antibiotic nightmare is not, as Quellist points out, really an issue for food preparation as such. I think the big risk for us humans is that something like a simple cut has the potential to be fatal. When I was 16 I got septicaemia from a really very insignificant cut and my doctor took great pleasure in telling me that 30 years earlier I would have been a dead man walking as, apparently, in a pre-penicillin world it would already have been too late to amputate my arm; there was a very clear track running all the way up my arm from my wrist to my armpit. There is the potential to return to the days when a couple of survivors from say half a dozen children was not bad going.


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## Nick B (Dec 22, 2015)

Another thing to remember (and this is not to say the issue isnt important) is that we dont currently fight virus's well at all. Antiviruses are not very good. Yet viruses kill people ALL THE TIME, bacterial infections arnt really any worse, it is just that we are used to dealing with them fairly easily. In fact, more people die from viruses as a matter of course. 
New ways of dealing with bacterial infections will be made. They are being developed now. It will happen.


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## Parson (Dec 22, 2015)

Living in farm country as I do, I can tell you that the use of antibiotics has been massively reduced in recent years. The idea of prophylactic antibiotic use is no longer tolerated among the farmers I know. Farmers have a lot at stake with antibiotics as well. Animals do not equal human life, but they are very valuable and the loss of even 5% of the farm animals likely means no profit for the farmer at all.


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## Ed Ryder (Jan 30, 2016)

Ironically, probably the biggest threat in a post-antibiotic world is being admitted to hospital.


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## BAYLOR (Jan 30, 2016)

Ed Ryder said:


> Ironically, probably the biggest threat in a post-antibiotic world is being admitted to hospital.




Indeed,  they are a good place to pick up those new and improved bugs.


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## Stephen Palmer (Feb 2, 2016)

BBC science today.


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## Dave (Feb 2, 2016)

Stephen Palmer said:


> BBC science today.


Duh! It must be a quiet day for news today - 
Dogs, Cats, Horses, Chickens, Cows, Pigs, Turkeys, Sheep, Rabbits, Donkeys, Guinea Pigs, Mice, Rats, Goldfish, Ducks, Canaries, Finches, Koi Carp, Guppies, Ring Necked Parakeets, Water Buffalo, Pigeons, Domendary Camels, Bactrian Camels, Silk Moths, Geese, Yaks, Oxen, Lamas, Alapacas, Ferrets, Guinea Fowl, Ringneck Doves, Bali Cattle, Gayal,  Siamese Fighting Fish, Silver Fox.........


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## Ed Ryder (Feb 2, 2016)

erk, whoever coined the term 'unnatural selection' should be dealt with appropriately. We're all part of nature!


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## Stephen Palmer (Feb 3, 2016)

Ed Ryder said:


> erk, whoever coined the term 'unnatural selection' should be dealt with appropriately. We're all part of nature!



They mean artificial-by-accident. ie without realising the consequences. Not the greatest term to use, admittedly.


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## thaddeus6th (Feb 3, 2016)

Reminds me of 'organic' food. As opposed to the metal food we otherwise eat


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## Brian G Turner (Feb 7, 2017)

The potential for a killer flu emerging has long been an apocalyptic fear - but I wonder if the end of antibiotics wouldn't be a more prosaic yet more devastating alternative?

In the meantime, antibiotic resistance is apparently being spread by flies: Flies are spreading antibiotic resistance from farms to people


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## Mirannan (Feb 7, 2017)

thaddeus6th said:


> Reminds me of 'organic' food. As opposed to the metal food we otherwise eat



Sure. Added to which the fact that most pesticides are organic compounds, as chemists would define them. Yet another word that has several meanings depending on context.

There is (at least!) one problem not often discussed, though; the fact that the energy budget of "conventional" agriculture is decidedly negative - as in yielding less calories than the energy put in, taking into account the energy used to make all that fertiliser and all those pesticides, manufacture and run farm machinery, and transport costs for the produce. It's been said that Western society eats oil.

Slightly less obviously, the mass budget is also decidedly negative; soil erosion is a distinct problem in intensively farmed areas such as the American Great Plains.

Sooner or later, something will have to be done.


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## Dave (Feb 7, 2017)

Mirannan said:


> Sooner or later, something will have to be done.


Hey, I just had a really crazy idea!

In another thread, they are discussing how robots will take over all manufacturing and there will no longer be any manufacturing jobs in the future, and consequently mass unemployment.

Here, you are saying that when the oil runs out, we won't be able to plough or harvest fields by machines, or to manufacture chemical fertilisers.

What if all those people without work instead worked in the fields like they did for several thousand millennia? Using animal power to pull ploughs and fertilise the soil? No, that's just too crazy!


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## Mirannan (Feb 7, 2017)

Very funny, Dave. Actually, there's quite a lot of evidence that agricultural productivity is higher if no ploughing is done at all. Polyculture produces more food (and more nutritious, at that) with much less energy use. As I see it, the problem with it is that there are no economies of scale involved, and this means big business doesn't get a look in.

One more thing: You think going back to old-fashioned methods is a good idea. OK then - fancy looking at the south end of a pair of oxen all day, for several months per year? No? Didn't think you would. OK when someone else is doing it, right?


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## Dave (Feb 7, 2017)

Actually, I love working outdoors. I've spent all my life working in kitchens, offices and in a factory once. They are noisy, airless, hot and sweaty. In winter, you go to work when it's dark and leave again when it's dark. I've been working outside during the last year and a half. You get sunlight, exercise, fresh air and better scenery. I don't mind the cold, so I think could even put up with the south end of an oxen rather than sit at a desk again. It is more healthy. At least some of this lack of resistance to bacteria and viruses is due to the sterile environment in offices, kitchens and factories. Kids aren't allowed to play in mud anymore and contact with animals is taboo.


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## BAYLOR (Feb 7, 2017)

Dave said:


> Actually, I love working outdoors. I've spent all my life working in kitchens, offices and in a factory once. They are noisy, airless, hot and sweaty. In winter, you go to work when it's dark and leave again when it's dark. I've been working outside during the last year and a half. You get sunlight, exercise, fresh air and better scenery. I don't mind the cold, so I think could even put up with the south end of an oxen rather than sit at a desk again. It is more healthy. At least some of this lack of resistance to bacteria and viruses is due to the sterile environment in offices, kitchens and factories. Kids aren't allowed to play in mud anymore and contact with animals is taboo.



Sterile environments combined with antibiotic resistance. It sounds like a recipe for future pandemics.


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## BAYLOR (Feb 7, 2017)

Brian G Turner said:


> The potential for a killer flu emerging has long been an apocalyptic fear - but I wonder if the end of antibiotics wouldn't be a more prosaic yet more devastating alternative?
> 
> In the meantime, antibiotic resistance is apparently being spread by flies: Flies are spreading antibiotic resistance from farms to people



Perhaps something on the order 1918 Flu ?


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## Boneman (Feb 9, 2017)

Nature gets you in the end when you keep messing with her...


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