INTRODUCTION

There’s a kind of doomsday feel to things right now - have you noticed? It’s not just that the Mayan calendar runs out on December 21st of next year. It’s not even the plethora of new warnings from astrophysicists, doctors and geologists about the possibly catastrophic events that are now known to be on the not-too-distant horizon. It has more to do with the zeitgeist, an undifferentiated sense that things can’t go on like they are forever.
And, of course, there are clues. Almost daily, items half-buried in news reports point to the Doom scenarios just lurking around the corner. Maybe you are too busy or too trapped in denial to notice them all, so this blog is here to help you keep track.

Friday, 9 December 2011

Something to Worry About Today

The looming problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has doctors worried.

Until recently, we relied on medical researchers to stay one step ahead of mankind’s oldest enemy, but now we hear we’re losing the fight. The miracle drugs that allowed us to scoff at maladies that killed our ancestors by the million are losing effectiveness as the microbes mutate and get stronger. One cause in particular seems difficult to tackle.

Germs get horny too.

According to bacteriologist Hugh Pennington, germs can reproduce without climbing all over each other like randy teenagers, but they do it anyway. As they do, they spread an enzyme that can make penicillin-related compounds useless.

The problem is so serious that in places like Scandinavia and Holland, doctors assume that patients transferred from British hospitals already carry the MRSA bacterium. As the enzyme, NDM-1, spreads, formerly curable infections with such germs as E-coli become all but untreatable.

Promiscuity in people is a hard enough nut to crack, as population planners and AIDS prevention professionals know. But you can’t get microbes to take cold showers.
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