RE: "Hysteria, Thy Name is SARS"

From: Stuart LaForge (stuart@ucla.edu)
Date: Thu May 15 2003 - 00:26:42 MDT

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    At 08:44 PM 5/14/03 -0700, you wrote:
    Everything I stated is such common knowledge in the
    medical community, as well as the educated community
    at large, that I can't imagine trying to come up with
    detailed references.

    Hi Phil,

            This is an open forum so I won't complain about people grinding their political axes here. I do however object to people claiming scientific backing (albeit vague) for what are in reality politically motivated statements. You have a right to your beliefs but don't call them "scientific facts" as that makes us real medical scientists who actually spend long hours in the lab trying to find those elusive "scientific facts" kind of upset.  
            First off, AIDS patients, gays, and/or hippies had nothing to do with the emergence of drug resistant tuberculosis or any other antibiotic resistant bacteria. But don't take my word for it for unlike you, I don't have to imagine detailed references. They are all right here at my fingertips. For example here is a recent abstract from a peer reviewed scientific journal regarding drug resistant TB:

    Infect Dis Clin North Am 2002 Mar;16(1):73-105

    Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.

    Seaworth BJ.

    Tuberculosis Elimination Division, Tuberculosis Education Center, Texas Center for Infectious Diseases, San Antonio, Texas, USA.

    Multidrug-resistant TB is a growing public health problem. Although control of the multidrug-resistant TB epidemic has been achieved in New York City, strains of multidrug-resistant TB are found in nearly every state. Much of the world faces a growing problem with no immediate solution. The treatment habits and policies that have led to this problem persist. New drug development has been almost nonexistent. The current tremendous global interest offers hope, as does the Global Alliance for Tuberculosis Drug Development supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Their mission is to accelerate the discovery and development of new antituberculosis drugs and put them on the market within 10 years, at prices affordable in less-developed countries. As Dr. Reichman notes, "this action will not address the main underlying cause of almost all drug resistance, non-adherence of patients and doctors to recommended regimens." He calls for an equal commitment to improving the capacity of health care workers to use new and older agents correctly, so that they may continue to be effective in the future. Each year brings new, at-risk immigrants to the United States from all regions of the globe. They bring all the TB problems of their countries of origin with them. Foreign-born people will have a significant impact on TB control efforts in the next decade and beyond. TB elimination programs will need to incorporate systems that can adequately address TB within the United States and support national TB programs in developing countries to help them develop the capacity to successfully manage their own TB problems. A review of the drug resistance patterns isolated from foreign-born people should be adequate to convince even skeptics of the need to support global TB programs.

            I have bolded the part that clearly states where drug resistance comes from. It is from patients like you who think they know better and therefore don't take the medications the way they are supposed to be taken. They either forget to take the medication too often or they start to feel better and so stop taking it to early, or worse they take it without the advice of a doctor since they have all those leftovers from their last sore throat. Not that there aren't some doctors to blame. God knows there are way too many physicians out there more than happy to prescribe an antibiotic for people with a viral infection like a cold "just in case" knowing full well it won't do a bit of good. Who knows... it may even start the next plague.

            You also wrote:

            "finally, in the early '90's, I heard this local (Los Angeles) research
            doctor who headed the largest local operation directed
            at AIDS on one of the talk radio shows and I called in
            and posed the question, prefacing it by mentioning
            that I had read McNeil's "Plagues and Peoples."
            There was a very noticeable pause before the doctor
            answered, and you could hear in his voice that he knew
            he was going to catch hell for saying it, but he did,
            and he stated that in fact specifically the rise in
            drug resistant TB was known for certain to be a direct
            result of the AIDS epidemic. When people can't ever
            quite shake an infection, because their immune systems
            are shot, and have to keep dosing it with antibiotics,
            over and over, then we all know exactly what the
            inevitable result is going to be - SUPER GERMS!

            I am curious which doctor it was since both the chairman and vice chairman of the largest local AIDS research operation (UCLA AIDS Institute) sit on my PhD committee and I can't imagine either one of them saying that.

    Nuff said? Thanks.

    Stuart LaForge

    P.S. A major source of worry regarding antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria amongst us scientists are the huge amounts of antibiotics fed to cattle and other livestock by ranchers and farmers on a daily basis. The livestock is perfectly healthy so they do it for the purely economic reason that they get a few extra pounds of meat from those livestock by doing it. So maybe even heterosexual married god-fearing conservative farmers in the midwest may be to blame... in addition to all those hippies, gays, and other unsavory characters from the left. ;)

     

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