The Complete Idiot's Guide to 2012 - Dr. Synthia Andrews Nd [104]
Bacteria are smart: as we hit them with antibiotics, they mutate to counter the attack. In the past, pharmaceutical companies have kept up with mutations pretty well, but recently the bugs have gotten the upper hand. TB, MRSA, and drug-resistant salmonella and pseudomonas are only a few of the better-known resistant bugs.
Overuse of Antibiotics
Many people think the main overuse of antibiotics happens with doctors. It’s true that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) believes that up to one third of the 150 million prescriptions written each year for antibiotics are unnecessary. However, the biggest problem is the overuse of antibiotics given to food animals such as cows, pigs, and farmed fish. In 1999, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine solidified the link between the farm use of antibiotics and difficult-to-treat antibiotic-resistant food-borne bacteria.
You may well wonder why antibiotics are given to the animals you eat. The simple answer is overcrowding. Animals that will become dinner are crowded into small areas with poor sanitation; disease is inevitable. The cure? Feed them daily doses of antibiotics, antibiotics that later affect you. Consider a young boy in Nebraska who contracted antibiotic-resistant salmonella from infected cows that had been given antibiotics. Or the outbreak in Malaysia killing 32 people from encephalitis contracted from antibiotic-fed pigs. If you’re not concerned with the suffering of food animals, you should well be concerned with the health implications to you!
Technology-Created Illness
New diseases show signs of having been created by new technologies, specifically genetic engineering. How does this work? Genetic engineering involves the transfer of genes from one species into another species. Using pig genes in apples to give apples stronger skins is one example. Sound like science fiction? It’s not! This is called “horizontal gene transfer” or the transfer of genes between unrelated species of plants or animals. Horizontal gene transfer has been implicated in drug-and antibiotic-resistance bacteria. Think of it: this technology depends on breaking down the natural barriers between species. It designs “gene transfer carriers” that pass genes from one species to another! Certainly the Maya did not predict this mechanism for disease and epidemics, but it’s become one of the ingredients in the mix.
Cosmic Caution
The Third World Network reports that scientific investigation is drawing a correlation between the increase in virulent infections and antibiotic resistance with the commercialization of biotechnology, specifically genetic engineering. Check out www.twnside.org.sg/title/heal-cn.htm for scientific articles.
Recently it’s been revealed that microorganisms genetically engineered for “contained use” may not be effectively contained. Could this be the source of some problems to come?
Diseases Old and New
2012 prophecies of increased plagues and epidemics can certainly be seen in the rise and spread of diseases in the past 20 years. Scientists are seeing the spread of diseases happening much faster than they expected. Consider West Nile virus, which was introduced into the United States in 1999 and within four years had spread across the country.
Try not to get depressed as you read on. So far medicine is staying on top of the disease resurgence, and there are tremendous resources being activated to make sure it stays that way! Our job is to look at the trends and see if they fit the 2012 predictions.
Cholera
Cholera was pretty much erased from North and South America