Antibiotic apocalypse

[Neil]

Quite worrying really! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21178718 Prof Dame Sally Davies said bacteria were becoming resistant to current drugs and there were few antibiotics to replace them. She told a committee of MPs that going for a routine operation could become deadly due to the threat of infection. Experts said it was a global problem and needed much more attention. Antibiotics have been one of the greatest success stories in medicine. However, bacteria are a rapidly adapting foe which find new ways to evade drugs. MRSA rapidly became one of the most feared words in hospitals wards and there are growing reports of resistance in strains of E. coli, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea. Prof Davies said: "It is clear that we might not ever see global warming, the apocalyptic scenario is that when I need a new hip in 20 years I'll die from a routine infection because we've run out of antibiotics." She said there was only one useful antibiotic left to treat gonorrhoea.

[MinionZombie]

Not that you'd want to catch gonorrhoea anyway, but you'd doubly not want to catch it in the future then - lest they find new drugs. Quite a nasty bugger ... and bloody difficult to spell, too! Hopefully they get their noggins together and develop some new antibiotics to tackle these evolving virus strains.

[MoonSylver]

There only 1 antibotic that stands between us & some other bacteria IIRC. Staph way be one one of them? From what I understand there isn't a big push to develop new ones as they are not profitable to pharmacutical companies. I wonder how well a client base that is dead from a global pandemic spends money on viagra?

[Neil]

I wonder how well a client base that is dead from a global pandemic spends money on viagra? Not well... Because they're already stiff!!! *drum roll* Do you see what I did there?

[Neil]

Hunt for new antibiotics miles under the sea - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21457149 Researchers are embarking on an £8m project to discover new antibiotics at the bottom of the ocean. A team, led by scientists at Aberdeen University, is hunting for undiscovered chemicals among life that has evolved in deep sea trenches. Prof Marcel Jaspars said the team hoped to find "the next generation" of infection-fighting drugs.