In 1929, Alexander Fleming warned that bacteria could develop resistance to the newly-discovered antibiotic penicillin, thus creating a more difficult problem. Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) lists antibiotic-resistance as one of the top 3 threats to human health. There are now 7 species of bacteria that are resistant to all antibiotics, with Tuberculosis (TB) being one of the main ones, and concerns of upcoming TB epidemics being untreatable by medicine. In 2004, in an effort to reduce antibiotic resistance, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) mandated that doctors identify bacteria before prescribing antibiotics and to also use susceptibility testing to determine if the antibiotics they are choosing to use would be effective against the bacteria they identify. That practice has never been instigated. It was deemed by medical doctors to be too time-consuming.

Faced with the unavailability of effective antibiotics to treat many infections, researchers are looking to new therapies. One of the most promising has been the use of AMPs, antimicrobial peptides, but as with penicillin in 1929, scientists in recent studies have discovered a greater downside to their use and application - http://the-scientist.com/2012/01/24/antimicrobial-cross-resistance-risk/


The study is an “important proof of principle,” said Gabriel Perron, an evolutionary microbiologist at Harvard University, who did not participate in the research, by email. Though previous studies have shown emergence of cross-resistance to AMPs before, explained Perron, this is the first demonstration that “evolution of resistance to a synthetic AMP, designed purely for therapeutic usage, can lead to cross-resistance with human AMPs.”

“It’s [a] pretty important [study],” agreed Angus Buckling, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Exeter, who was not involved in the research. It emphasizes the danger that use of “a potential therapeutic peptide can result in cross resistance to a human defensin.”

“We really need drugs, badly,” said Hancock, who sees this focus on theoretical concerns about cross-resistance as tangential to the “bigger concern” of antibiotic resistance.

But Brockhurst and others feel that such investigations are needed now to forestall a repeat of the endless battle against antibiotic resistance. Brockhurst also points to another worrying aspect of the data: even once pexiganan was removed from the culture media, the bacteria retained resistance to the AMP for 100 bacterial generations, suggesting that cross-resistance to endogenous AMPs may be difficult to get rid of once bacteria acquire it.

This result is worse than what antibiotics have created in today's world and they are listed as the 3rd biggest threat to human health by the WHO. The use of these peptides would mean that our own immune systems would become compromised in their ability to regulate the over 100 trillion micro-organisms that reside in and on us, leaving us with little or no defenses. We ignored the observations of Fleming in 1929. It will not serve us to ignore the warnings of so many more scientists where microbial peptides are concerned.

The medical profession is willing to accept anything however, as antibiotic drugs become less effective and more problematic. In doing so, they willingly place more and more people at risk.

Prevention through proper diet, exercise, sleep, and time for reflection will have greater reward and no risk. The science of epigenetics continually demonstrates that fruits and veggies have greater and safer curative powers than any medication. Plants have the ability to prevent and reverse genetic conditions such as heart disease and cancers. The use of herbs allows us to take advantage of these plant properties, as they have for hundreds of years.

Once again, it begs the question, "If MDs couldn't prescribe medications, what could they do?"

More and more, the initials of MD, seem to mean little more than Medication Dispenser. It's time for medical doctors to return to a patient-centered practice, instead of a pharmaceutical-centered practice.