{"id":445,"date":"2011-10-25T17:37:47","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T15:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/?p=445"},"modified":"2011-10-25T17:37:47","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T15:37:47","slug":"sorry-to-be-all-doom-and-gloom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/2011\/10\/25\/sorry-to-be-all-doom-and-gloom\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorry to be all doom-and-gloom\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2026but I follow the study of microbes and viruses as an interest I\u2019ve had for years.\u00a0 They\u2019re cool.\u00a0 They\u2019re the smallest things in the world you can still call \u201calive\u201d and they often times make their living by hunting us.<\/em>\u00a0 That\u2019s a bit dramatic, they don\u2019t really \u201chunt\u201d us, but they do successfully eat<\/em> us.\u00a0 Regardless of the figures you have in your bank account, regardless of your political or religious leanings, regardless of skin color, sexual orientation, whatever.\u00a0 They eat <\/em>us.\u00a0 (Okay, there are some resistances that are carried by different varieties of people, for instance people of African descent have a slightly higher resistance to malaria \u2013 a parasitic infection \u2013 due to their blood structure, which coincidentally also makes them more susceptible to sickle cell anemia).<\/p>\n

This blog post on SciAm today<\/a> reminded me of this, and inspired me to do a little writing on the subject.<\/p>\n

Bacteria and viruses, when they cause disease, generally do so because they \u2013 or we \u2013 have not yet evolved to properly coexist in a developed relationship.\u00a0 Such relationships exist throughout nature\u2026for example, you have thousands of different bacteria in and on you right now, and you are a carrier of them.\u00a0 Escheria coli, for instance, or a range of Staph bacteria live in your gut and on your skin, respectively.\u00a0 When our species \u2013 or our ancestor lines, since these have been with us very likely since before we were humans \u2013 first encountered these, it was likely a violent meeting.\u00a0 The ebola<\/em> virus is a not-so-subtle reminder that when two species have their first meeting, it is often explosive.\u00a0 Ebola doesn\u2019t know what to do with us, and we don\u2019t know what to do with Ebola, so when it eats it just keeps going, and we have no natural method of stopping it \u2013 and it eats until there is no more left to eat.<\/p>\n

And really, what occurs when a microbe and a human-size creature come to live with one another is that the large creature finds a way to survive, shunt off the worst effects, and sometimes even benefit from the presence of the microbe.\u00a0 The microbe, being unthinking, just goes on about its business of living, eating, reproducing, and dying.<\/p>\n

Lately, though, we have inadvertently re-ignited some fights with existing microbes.\u00a0 Some of you may know of MRSA, a \u201cmultiply-resistant\u201d form of Staphylococcus Aureus, a bacteria commonly found on your skin.\u00a0 This bacteria is available in many forms, one of which is the infamous \u201cflesh eating\u201d bacteria.\u00a0 There are also several strains of E. coli that are dangerous \u2013 even lethal.\u00a0 And some of these are resistant as well.<\/p>\n

For those unfamiliar with the term \u201cresistant\u201d, that implies resistance to our antibiotics.\u00a0 Antibiotics are the weapons we use in our ongoing war with microbes.\u00a0 They\u2019re the bullets your doctor uses to shoot the bad guys when the bad guys attack you.\u00a0 For instance, when you get pneumonia, chances are your doctor will prescribe something like streptomycin (btw \u2013 \u201cmycin\u201d indicates the antibiotic is a derivative of a fungus, which is where most of our antibiotics come from; fungus have been fighting bacteria for a long <\/em>freaking time, and have developed a hefty arsenal).\u00a0 Bacteria get killed by these chemicals in large quantities.\u00a0 However, the bullets aren\u2019t perfect, and sometimes the bacteria have the microbial version of body armor.\u00a0 Some bacteria will inevitably survive exposure to the antibiotics.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s where the real kicker shows up \u2013 the ones that survive are the tough<\/em> ones.\u00a0 And since the weak ones are dead and get swept away, that leaves a lot of room for the tough ones to breed.\u00a0 So you hit them again before they get the chance to do that.\u00a0 This is why it is really important for you to finish any course of antibiotics that your doctor gives you.\u00a0 You can\u2019t just take pills until the sick symptoms go away \u2013 if you stop, you\u2019re leaving behind the tough bacteria.\u00a0 You finish the course to further weaken the remaining bacteria, kill what you can.\u00a0 Your body also works against them, and if they\u2019re weakened by antibiotics, your body has a much easier time defeating them.\u00a0 So chances are, you\u2019ll eliminate the infection completely.\u00a0 But if you stop halfway, you might stop being sick, but you\u2019ll leave a population of toughened bacteria behind.<\/p>\n

This is one of the reasons I tell everyone I know to never use \u201cantibacterial\u201d soaps and cleaners.\u00a0 The reason?\u00a0 When you wipe down a counter with an antibacterial, then you kill probably 99.9% of the bacteria on the surface. \u00a0That 0.1% remainder can re-populate the surface in 24 hours<\/em>.\u00a0 And what\u2019s more, the entire population will be descendants of the bacteria with the highest resistance to that antibacterial agent.<\/em>\u00a0 Repeated cleanings with the same material repeat this cycle.\u00a0 At the end of the bottle, you\u2019ve created a false sense of confidence for yourself, and a practically immune population of bacteria for your countertop.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, bacteria share genes among themselves<\/em>.\u00a0 Even different species of bacteria do this.\u00a0 When they bump into each other, they have a tendency to form little tubules that connect their cells, and genes are passed between them on little chunks of DNA called plasmids<\/em>.\u00a0 Think of it as something like an early version of sex mixed with a game of telephone with cans and strings.\u00a0 Different species have been observed to trade genes for antibiotic resistance among themselves.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s change the subject to livestock.\u00a0 Chickens, pigs, cows, etc.\u00a0 Farmers discovered long ago that giving livestock antibiotics in small doses as part of their regular feed makes for larger, healthier animals \u2013 in other words, that treatment translates into real dollars and cents when the time comes to sell the meat and other products derived from the livestock.\u00a0 This has been going on for decades<\/em>.\u00a0 Something like 29 million<\/em> pounds of antibiotics are consumed by America\u2019s livestock annually.<\/p>\n

These animals are given a steady stream of diluted antibiotics.\u00a0 These animals live in extremely close proximity to one another.\u00a0 Each one of them is, to put it mildly hardly a sterile environment.\u00a0 Cases of resistant Staph, E. coli, and even Salmonella have been documented numerous times at a host of different farms.\u00a0 A friend of mine, who might be reading this right now, twenty years ago became something of an expert at the disposal methods for pig shit (the term used then was \u201cSwine Waste Management\u201d), and can attest to the enormous lagoons of liquefied feces that comprise the waste dumps for pig farms.\u00a0 Chicken poop and cow poop meet different fates, but the animals in question are generally exposed \u2013 and exposed liberally \u2013 to the output of one another\u2019s GI tract on a daily, if not hourly, basis.<\/p>\n

And those wastes contain large quantities of resistant strains of bacteria.<\/p>\n

So \u2013 when you hear about a spill in North Carolina where a lagoon of pig waste broke its levee and spilled an absolutely obscene quantity of pig crap into a local river, you\u2019re looking at an accident that doesn\u2019t just have disgusting implications.\u00a0 You\u2019re looking at a severely dangerous biohazard.\u00a0 One that has enormous health consequences.<\/p>\n

But those spills don\u2019t occur often, and are easy enough to avoid, right?<\/p>\n

Allow me to present to you the common housefly.\u00a0 The housefly, whose wriggling children grow in those very lagoons, waste pits, and cisterns of resistant bacteria, maturing into winged adults in a shockingly fast period.\u00a0 Who eat, walk in, and vomit that slurry of unmentionables \u2013 often on the food you are about to eat, yourself.<\/p>\n

And in whose gut can be found these resistant bacteria.<\/p>\n

The housefly can cover five miles in a day, easily.\u00a0 And it can hitch a ride in a vehicle just as easily as a human can.\u00a0 The housefly buzzing around you may very easily have come from a very distant location.<\/p>\n

A resistant strain of bacteria does not have to cause illness immediately.\u00a0 A person may be colonized by a strain for years before any infection occurs \u2013 remember, Staphylococcus lives naturally on human skin.\u00a0 A person is likely to never even know they are carrying these bacteria.\u00a0 Until they get scratched, or cut, or have an accident, or even go in to the doctor for surgery.\u00a0 Then, when the skin is open, the bacteria get in \u2013 and the weapons we\u2019ve spent battling the bugs for decades will turn out to be useless.<\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the point of all this, you ask?\u00a0 Kill more houseflies?\u00a0 Yes, kill them if you can and will.<\/p>\n

More importantly \u2013 be aware of what we created.\u00a0 We.\u00a0 In our desire for more and cheaper foodstuffs, we are incurring a heavy, heavy price, one that will very likely be paid by our kids in a far more dangerous environment.<\/p>\n

We can stop this, but we have to be willing to pay a little more for our food.\u00a0 Outlawing the use of antibiotics on animals that are not sick would be a great start.\u00a0 Breaking up the big industrial-farming operations in favor of smaller, free-range farms would be another good step.\u00a0 Cooking the food you buy thoroughly is probably the most proactive measure you can take.\u00a0 Most of all though, is simple awareness:\u00a0 awareness of the food you are about to put in your mouth, awareness of the industry that produces it, and awareness of the habits of microbes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2026but I follow the study of microbes and viruses as an interest I\u2019ve had for years.\u00a0 They\u2019re cool.\u00a0 They\u2019re the smallest things in the world you can still call \u201calive\u201d and they often times make their living by hunting us.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}