The evolution of a killer

Failure to test patients with tuberculosis for drug-resistant strains may have spurred the development of a deadly antibiotic-resistant outbreak, researchers have found - http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071128/full/news.2007.306.html


In 2001, the CDC issued a statement to the medical profession requiring them to perform susceptibility testing for ALL patients prior to prescribing ANY antibiotics. Compliance has been dismal and continues to result increased antibiotic-resistance and patient deaths.

Ignoring this mandate has lead to the creation of bacterial strains that are resistant to all antibiotics. This is something that was predicted by Alexander Fleming in 1929, when he discovered penicillin.

"XDR-TB is a lethal descendant of the multidrug-resistant strains of tuberculosis that emerged in the 1990s."

“Between HIV and TB — not only in Africa but in parts of India and China — there are going to be so many deaths that it will change the shape of those societies,” says Michael Iseman, a doctor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver, who was not affiliated with the study.

"Models have predicted that without improved control of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, the XDR-TB outbreak will become an uncontrollable epidemic."

The continued use of antibiotics has lead to bacterial adaptations whereby the bacteria spread their resistance faster and create mutations within themselves that make them resistant to all antibiotics.

A dangerous new mutation that makes some bacteria resistant to almost all antibiotics has become increasingly common in India and Pakistan and is being found in patients in Britain and the United States who got medical care in those countries, according to new studies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/world/asia/12bug.html


The use of antibiotics is associated with diabetes, obesity, Life-threatening colitis, and cancers - http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060280


Most medical doctors blame moms and patients for the spread of antibiotic resistance and the unnecessary use of antibiotics. Tweet