It's called evolution =) Genetic's don't stay the same long. Massive environmental changes and the fact that the body doesn't adapt very quickly lead to all sorts of problems.
It's actually partially medicines fault that people get sicker as a whole. If we didn't know how to stop people with life threatening illnesses from getting worse and prolonging their life (hence chances for breeding) those genetic lines would gradually die out. Medicine is exceedingly good at prolonging the life of sick people but incredibly slow at actually coming up with cures for the root causes of those sicknesses. However simply denying sick people treatment is the moral equivalent of genocide.
Mike I most definitely already welcome some medicines, my fathers been through two heart attacks, and my mother has colon cancer. Without quiet a slew of those drugs I wouldn't have had an Easter dinner to go to this weekend. But that doesn't mean the whole system works flawlessly and all medicine is good. I'm going to say rather broadly that the bulk of 'what ails us' that's been garnering more attention in the news lately is in fact brought on by the problems in out society as a hole, such as stress from increased population densities we just can't work in 'villages' as complex as cities have grown to be, our brains can't handle it. Our diets are only a shadow of what they were a few hundred years ago. We screw ourselves up horribly every day in any number of a hundred different ways, I just think addressing root causes is more important the drugs for many of the symptoms as medicine itself doesn't cure the root cause.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm less against medicine as opposed to being against the society that we live in that puts medicine in the position it currently is in because they can't possibly fix everything that's going wrong with us because the medicines don't deal with the root cause of the problem. In my fathers case it was heavy smoking and bad diet for years that lead to his heart attack.
Medicine itself can't cure anything it can only relieve symptoms.
Antibiotics are a good example of something extremely useful, but there are many resistant strains cropping up in hospitals from their over use, and that's only get worse. Short term perception of gain, long term loss. It's a slipper moral and philosophical slope because the weighing of good vs bad is such a difficult thing to do, and physically impossible in the long run, as we simply can't predict the upset we cause to the system as a whole until the effects are already being felt of it's collapse.
Mike, there's a problem with that theory. The antibiotic resistance bacteria strains that are currently cropping are prevalent primarily in hospitals themselves, not in the public at large.
Mike, there's a problem with that theory. The antibiotic resistance bacteria strains that are currently cropping are prevalent primarily in hospitals themselves, not in the public at large.
A Vicious Cycle: More Infections and Antibiotic Overuse
Though bacterial antibiotic resistance is a natural phenomenon, societal factors also contribute to the problem. These factors include increased infection transmission, coupled with inappropriate antibiotic use.
More people are contracting infections. Sinusitis among adults is on the rise, as are ear infections in children. A report by CDC's Linda F. McCaig and James M. Hughes, M.D., in the Jan. 18, 1995, Journal of the American Medical Association, tracks antibiotic use in treating common illnesses. The report cites nearly 6 million antibiotic prescriptions for sinusitis in 1985, and nearly 13 million in 1992. Similarly, for middle ear infections, the numbers are 15 million prescriptions in 1985, and 23.6 million in 1992.
Causes for the increase in reported infections are diverse. Some studies correlate the doubling in doctor's office visits for ear infections for preschoolers between 1975 and 1990 to increased use of day-care facilities. Homelessness contributes to the spread of infection. Ironically, advances in modern medicine have made more people predisposed to infection. People on chemotherapy and transplant recipients taking drugs to suppress their immune function are at greater risk of infection.
"There are the number of immunocompromised patients, who wouldn't have survived in earlier times," says Cranston. "Radical procedures produce patients who are in difficult shape in the hospital, and are prone to nosocomial [hospital-acquired] infections. Also, the general aging of patients who live longer, get sicker, and die slower contributes to the problem," he adds.
Though some people clearly need to be treated with antibiotics, many experts are concerned about the inappropriate use of these powerful drugs. "Many consumers have an expectation that when they're ill, antibiotics are the answer. They put pressure on the physician to prescribe them. Most of the time the illness is viral, and antibiotics are not the answer. This large burden of antibiotics is certainly selecting resistant bacteria," says Blum.
Another much-publicized concern is use of antibiotics in livestock, where the drugs are used in well animals to prevent disease, and the animals are later slaughtered for food. "If an animal gets a bacterial infection, growth is slowed and it doesn't put on weight as fast," says Joe Madden, Ph.D., strategic manager of microbiology at FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. In addition, antibiotics are sometimes administered at low levels in feed for long durations to increase the rate of weight gain and improve the efficiency of converting animal feed to units of animal production.
FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine limits the amount of antibiotic residue in poultry and other meats, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture monitors meats for drug residues. According to Margaret Miller, Ph.D., deputy division director at the Center for Veterinary Medicine, the residue limits for antimicrobial animal drugs are set low enough to ensure that the residues themselves do not select resistant bacteria in (human) gut flora.
FDA is investigating whether bacteria resistant to quinolone antibiotics can emerge in food animals and cause disease in humans. Although thorough cooking sharply reduces the likelihood of antibiotic-resistant bacteria surviving in a meat meal to infect a human, it could happen. Pathogens resistant to drugs other than fluoroquinolones have sporadically been reported to survive in a meat meal to infect a human. In 1983, for example, 18 people in four midwestern states developed multi-drug-resistant Salmonella food poisoning after eating beef from cows fed antibiotics. Eleven of the people were hospitalized, and one died.
A study conducted by Alain Cometta, M.D., and his colleagues at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois in Lausanne, Switzerland, and reported in the April 28, 1994, New England Journal of Medicine, showed that increase in antibiotic resistance parallels increase in antibiotic use in humans. They examined a large group of cancer patients given antibiotics called fluoroquinolones to prevent infection. The patients' white blood cell counts were very low as a result of their cancer treatment, leaving them open to infection.
Between 1983 and 1993, the percentage of such patients receiving antibiotics rose from 1.4 to 45. During those years, the researchers isolated Escherichia coli bacteria annually from the patients, and tested the microbes for resistance to five types of fluoroquinolones. Between 1983 and 1990, all 92 E. coli strains tested were easily killed by the antibiotics. But from 1991 to 1993, 11 of 40 tested strains (28 percent) were resistant to all five drugs.
**broken link removed**
AlsoBetween 1983 and 1993, the percentage of such patients receiving antibiotics rose from 1.4 to 45. During those years, the researchers isolated Escherichia coli bacteria annually from the patients, and tested the microbes for resistance to five types of fluoroquinolones. Between 1983 and 1990, all 92 E. coli strains tested were easily killed by the antibiotics. But from 1991 to 1993, 11 of 40 tested strains (28 percent) were resistant to all five drugs.
Which I found interesting because although the occurrence of relapse was lower if they took their medications under supervision it was not 0. So at BEST following the doctors guidelines slows the progression of their development, but the is not as statistically relevant as the increase in the number of people taking anti-biotics overall.In the Texas study, 407 patients from 1980 to 1986 were allowed to take their medication on their own. From 1986 until the end of 1992, 581 patients were closely followed, with nurses observing them take their pills. By the end of the study, the relapse rate--which reflects antibiotic resistance--fell from 20.9 to 5.5 percent. This trend is especially significant, the researchers note, because it occurred as risk factors for spreading TB--including AIDS, intravenous drug use, and homelessness--were increasing. The conclusion: Resistance can be slowed if patients take medications correctly.
With the way population growth is going I doubt it's gonna be that nice =) It's only a matter of time before mother nature makes some drastic corrections. I don't mean to sound too much like a pessimist, but it's just a matter of time, this generation, next, 10 or more who knows, however at some point there is going to be a natural 'correction' and the human race isn't gonna much like it.
Mike, there's a problem with that theory. The antibiotic resistance bacteria strains that are currently cropping are prevalent primarily in hospitals themselves, not in the public at large.
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