We May Have Reached The 'Apocalyptic Scenario' With Antibiotics - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Tmaxx;46664954]Well guess our bodies are gonna have to adapt.[/QUOTE] Oh, don't worry about that. It's just that a ton of people are going to die before people who have a natural immunity get singled-out enough for the next generation to inherit their trait.

Meh, give it a decade after half of humanity has died and the bacteria will have devolved into normality. #YOLOSWAGGERMS [editline]8th December 2014[/editline] Also, as someone who lives in the Midwest where nothing survives for 5 months in the winters, haha fuck you guys. Just kidding, stay safe!

[QUOTE=paindoc;46666131]If it affects the structure of cell walls it may attack our own cells as well? Even if it doesn't it will still at least attack beneficial bacteria.[/QUOTE] If it affects the Cell walls then it likely binds and finds to a specific protein of the bacteria. While ignoring others of different proteins.

I guess that means the plague is coming back. Well, gentlemen, it was nice posting with you. I'm off to Spain to become a flagellant.

[QUOTE=Deathbane;46667264]How derp can you be. The reason there was a population explosion is because of the industrial age making it easier to mass produce food and making life easier in general. Nothing to do with antibiotics. This industrialization even kept the population skyrocketing through two horrific world was when millions upon millions died. Anyone with half a braincell knows that 12 billion + is not a sustainable nor 'normal' population level but artificially maintained - its bound to be cut down to size at some point, through some measure. That doesn't mean that every last human will die. Not to say we shouldn't be researching more antibiotics, we should, but we should be mindful how fragile modern life is and how disconnected it is from actual reality especially in the west.[/QUOTE] Note : You're wrong. Antibiotics have an immense contribution to the population boom. People living together are ultimately able to transmit diseases and infections a lot easier. With Antibiotics we're able to stop that. If you want a good reason to be looking at what can happen simply look at Sierra Leone, and imagine that there's no way to stop an outbreak. It can and will destroy settlements no matter how big. If TB got out then you'll likely have everyone in New York block being quarantined in an attempt to stop it, or it can easily infect and kill anyone who isn't able to resist it. It's natural selection yes, but it'll completely wipe out anyone who cannot stop it, and when Doctor's, Engineers and other qualified people who help keep society are hindered or wiped out then you're going to have collapse of society.

Maybe it's better that way. Humanity sucks.

[QUOTE=Ardosos;46665023]Maybe we can strategically infect people with "good" bacteria or something, compete with the "bad" bacteria for nutrients but are less harmful to people? Natural selection and such.[/QUOTE] What you're suggesting is just taking probiotics, which is what anyone who takes antibiotics is supposed to do to replace the good bacteria that gets nuked by the antibiotics. Unfortunately 99% of the population is unaware of this or just don't care, including most doctors.

[QUOTE=Str4fe;46665325]Humanity has taken hygiene and health way too far, relying on antibiotics and such, rather than our own immunity system. The immunity system is degrading and dying, soon we'll need medication to survive basic diseases.[/QUOTE] Actually a human from today is likely to be much more resistant to diseases compared to a human 2 centuries ago. a) higher population density means that our immune system is more often exposed b) The amount of food and care we receive means that the majority of people in the west are essentially prime individuals.

Antibiotis never were all that great to begin with. Phage therapy has always had great potential, but we have still a lot to learn about it. It could potentially cure many illnesses which are known to be un-treatable and lethal nowadays.

There's always bacteriotherapy. Getting a transplant of good bacteria from a donor helps to regulate the body and can stave off really nasty infections. Only problem is the place you get it from is shit. So get ready for dose obamacare shit transplants guise.

I haven't taken any antibiotic medication(or any medicine for that matter) since I was 14 years old. Am I going to die first? :tinfoil:

I don't think I've ever taken antibiotics. I rarely get infections or any out-of-the-ordinary diseases, so it's just never called for it. I don't have a memory of a "worst I've ever felt" because the worst I usually get is a stomach virus that passes without help in a few days. Am I super-immune?

You know what it's time for... "NANOMACHINES SON."

[QUOTE=J!NX;46666051][t]http://ffmedia.ign.com/general/multimedia/bubbleboy1.jpg[/t] [/QUOTE] "My immunesystem is augmented."

Now we wait for nanomachines

there were 2 very big causes for this. First is the mentality in certain countries (particularly China) where people dont want to be sick and miss work, so they force their doctors to fill them antibiotics, even for a thing like a simple flu. Then, the bigger issue, is the meat industry. 80% of all antibiotics are given to live stock. ( [url]http://www.sustainabletable.org/257/antibiotics[/url] ) instead of, you know, making their living spaces clean, we fill them up with medicine. The issue here is that with our extreme overuse of antibiotics, natural selection came into play. because so many bacteria were uneedingly exposed to antibiotics, they evolved to be come resistant (while if if a small number of bacteria were exposed, the chances of this happening is much lower. It has come to the point were antibiotic prone bacteria are being killed off and being replaced by strands that are resistant to antibiotics

[QUOTE=SadisticGecko;46665846]This isn't true at all. There's no money in antibiotics due to the fact in most cases a person might take the drug once or twice then never need it again. It's also why they tend to be expensive. Getting a drug approved by the FDA can take up to ten years and cost million of dollars. The human testing phase tends to take up the bulk of that. On the other hand, because of the current issues with antibiotics and the lack of new ones, the FDA is trying to get a fast track thing going which would lessen the testing phase down to two years. I can't give exact numbers on things since I don't have my pharmacy practice notes in front of me, but if you're curious, I can dig them up.[/QUOTE] It's not that you only need to take antibiotics once that limit their potential development. Personally, I take an amoxycillin course about once a year for the occasional throat/lung infection. However, when people say that drug companies aren't making antibiotics there's a grain of truth to that (for once). Firstly, it's incredibly difficult. Unlike human cells per se, bacteria have evolved and adapted to deal with basically everything that's thrown at it to kill them. From cell walls to efflux pumps to new enzymes, if a bacteria doesn't have any native defences, it makes them. Secondly, the market just doesn't reward novel antibiotics like it should. Drug patents last for around 20 years; this includes clinical trials meaning you get less than that by the time you enter the market. For most drugs, this is when you start making money and recoup development costs (before a drug goes generic). However, new antibiotics are shelved as they are drugs of last resort when all other antibiotics fail. This means that you get even less time to recoup development costs of your drug and all the other things in the pipeline that didn't make it. It's tragic but not surprising that a number of major drug companies are exiting antibiotic research; arguably the most important area for modern civilization.

Fundamentally this is a problem on par with climate change and we need to deal with it the same way, we should be setting up government funds in every country so we can start stock piling new anti bacterial defences because it will not be a fun world when routine hospital visits end in MRSA and other antibiotic resistant shit.