Here are two phrases from top officials and scientists that you never want to hear when it comes to public health.
First, Center for Disease Control Director Tom Frieden: “It basically shows us that the end of the road isn’t very far away for antibiotics.”
Antibiotics. You know, those things that have defeated polio and malaria and the measles and all the other horrific infectious diseases that made life prior to Jonas Salk short and brutish?
Okay. So that’s not good.
What about you, authors of a study published by the American Society of Microbiology?
“[This] heralds the emergence of a truly pan-drug resistant bacteria.”
Great. A bacteria that is resistant to any and all drugs, that basically wipes away a century worth of American progress.
Fucking shit. And it’s here. In Pennsylvania.
A strain of E. coli was found in the piss of a 49-year-old woman that was resistant to even the most powerful antibiotic drugs.
Via The Washington Post:
The antibiotic-resistant strain was found last month in the urine of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Department of Defense researchers determined that carried a strain of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin.
Colistin is the antibiotic of last resort for particularly dangerous types of superbugs, including a family of bacteria known as CRE, which health officials have dubbed “nightmare bacteria.” In some instances, these superbugs kill up to 50 percent of patients who become infected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called CRE among the country’s most urgent public health threats.
But it couldn’t do dick to this woman’s E. coli. This is the first time it’s been seen in the U.S., and basically means were one nasty person’s cough away from a repeat of the Spanish Influenza.
Here’s Frieden again.
“[We] may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive-care units, or patients getting urinary tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics,” CDC Director Tom Frieden in an interview Thursday.
“I’ve been there for TB patients. I’ve cared for patients for whom there are no drugs left. It is a feeling of such horror and helplessness,” Frieden added. “This is not where we need to be.”
No, it sure fucking isn’t, dude.
Experts are working to find how the woman acquired the strain and, you know, hopefully prevent it from spreading and the world ending.
[Via @markberman]