Antibiotic-resistant bacteria on the rise
From The Endtime
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria kill more than 40,000 North Americans a year, and the numbers will soar unless the so-called super-germs are brought under control, a new book warns.
The book, The Killers Within, charts the acceleration of resistant infections that began with a few cases in the late 1980s and is now spiraling out of control. The germs, once killed easily with standard antibiotics, can disintegrate skin, clog the lungs and carve golf-ball-size abscesses in flesh.
"The bad bugs are getting stronger and they're getting stronger faster," says co-author Mark Plotkin, a Smithsonian Institution ethnobotanist.
While West Nile virus is grabbing headlines for killing about 100 people, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 44,000 people in North America die annually of infections from drug-resistant germs.
Some experts believe the numbers are higher. The epidemic comes as pharmaceutical companies have all but stopped doing research on antibiotics.
Decades ago, these species could be wiped out with a single dose of penicillin. But overuse of antibiotics gave the bacteria a chance to develop new genes that protected them.
Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg says the Ebola and West Nile viruses are minor by comparison with such bacteria. "The odds of Ebola breaking out are quite low, but the stakes are quite high," says Dr. Lederberg, a professor at Rockefeller University in New York.
"With antibiotic resistance, the odds are certain and the stakes are just as high."