On Sat, Aug 11, 2001 at 02:21:55PM +1000, Damien Broderick wrote:
> I'd been musing on this very example last night, wondering how to get
> across to ordinary folks how ludicrous it seems to me. But my logic and
> facts might be in error, so I'd like to run my riposte past the biologists
> on the list:
>
> `Superbugs', so-called, are not some new and unheralded kind of omnipotent
> monster bacterium. (And of course they can't be any kind of virus, because
> antibiotics shouldn't affect those critters--unless altering the background
> ecological mix does somehow skew the norm of reaction for viri.)
True. I think the virus part might be too complex to have in the main
argument.
But didn't some forms of antibiotics resistance develop in hospitals rather
than due to agribusiness?
> What they are is, by definition, *bacteria resistant to a particular
> antibiotic*, or perhaps a family of similar antibiotics.
>
> That means that their evolution, at worst, has reverted the balance of play
> to the way it was originally.
Yes, and this is worth stressing. And as you point out, the advances in
genomics, proteomics and similar areas increase the rate new methods of
dealing with them can be invented as well as totally new approaches
(ranging from bacteriophages to antisense DNA). The solution to bacteria
developing resistance is continous change and development, something I
guess enemies of progress conveniently forget.
The only thing that is far slower these days than before antibiotics is
getting the new drugs approved.
> *Except* that, in the meantime, monocultural agribiz has reduced the
> genetic diversity of crops, making widespread variants especially
> vulnerable to the rebound diseases. That's not the fault of antibiotics
> *per se*, though. It might be a very good reason to worry about excessively
> centralized and massively advertised corporate food production.
True. It also seems that there might be benefits in more niched markets in
order to encourage diversity. Once we are rich enough, benefits of scale in
food production may be less worth than the subjective benefits of
specialisation.
> My feeling is that one needs to be very careful in describing the real
> problem(s), and allocating blame. As far as I can see, *nobody* has been
> harmed by applying antibiotics to ill humans. I and many others are now
> alive because of them. If we now face, at worst, reversion to a condition
> where resistant bacterial diseases roam the world unchecked, that's very
> sad--not because of the brief, blessed epoch of cheap, effective
> antibiotics, but because it's at an end.
Good point.
I liked your metaphor in the other post of plucking the easy low-hanging
antibiotics fruits from the tree; it might be worth pointing out that we
can not just pick high-hanging fruit but also make the tree grow new
fruits.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:06 MDT