Moderator: Peak Moderation
As I have predicted before, this is the start of a terrifying new trend, the emergence of killer diseases with no modern antitode.India has reported its first cases of "total drug-resistant tuberculosis", a long-feared and virtually untreatable form of the killer lung disease.
Good job we never discover new drugs thenLord Beria3 wrote:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... losis.html
As I have predicted before, this is the start of a terrifying new trend, the emergence of killer diseases with no modern antitode.India has reported its first cases of "total drug-resistant tuberculosis", a long-feared and virtually untreatable form of the killer lung disease.
Hospitals will become places of fear and death within decades as these nasty viruses start spreading around the world thanks to globalisation.
TB isn't caused by a virus. Viruses aren't treatable with antibiotics. TB is caused by a bacterium, and the resistance is to antibiotics.Lord Beria3 wrote:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... losis.html
As I have predicted before, this is the start of a terrifying new trend, the emergence of killer diseases with no modern antitode.India has reported its first cases of "total drug-resistant tuberculosis", a long-feared and virtually untreatable form of the killer lung disease.
Hospitals will become places of fear and death within decades as these nasty viruses start spreading around the world thanks to globalisation.
No. Why should the TB bacterium have had any natural resistance to antibiotics it had never previously been exposed to?JavaScriptDonkey wrote:Good job we never discover new drugs thenLord Beria3 wrote:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... losis.html
As I have predicted before, this is the start of a terrifying new trend, the emergence of killer diseases with no modern antitode.India has reported its first cases of "total drug-resistant tuberculosis", a long-feared and virtually untreatable form of the killer lung disease.
Hospitals will become places of fear and death within decades as these nasty viruses start spreading around the world thanks to globalisation.
Surely TB was drug resistant before we discovered whatever we used to treat it?
Lord Beria3 wrote:
As I have predicted before,
Ahh, yes. I didn't put that very well did I?UndercoverElephant wrote: No. Why should the TB bacterium have had any natural resistance to antibiotics it had never previously been exposed to?
We are not discovering new antibiotics very quickly. Once TB has become resistant to everything we currently throw at it then there will be a steady rise in deaths. TB kills people slowly.
You mean TB will go back to being an insipid killer of humans, especially those living in poor urban accomodation. We are part of a generation that has forgotten how dangerous TB has been historically. Think leprosy.JavaScriptDonkey wrote:Ahh, yes. I didn't put that very well did I?UndercoverElephant wrote: No. Why should the TB bacterium have had any natural resistance to antibiotics it had never previously been exposed to?
We are not discovering new antibiotics very quickly. Once TB has become resistant to everything we currently throw at it then there will be a steady rise in deaths. TB kills people slowly.
What I meant was that the effect on the patients before we discovered the drugs to treat TB was the same then as it will be in the future when we have killed off all the drug-responsive TB strains and are left with only the drug-resistive ones.
Beria's future world of drug-resistant TB will in effect be a lot like the historical past of drug-responsive TB when we had no drugs.
Let's hope the vaccinations work as well as they're supposed to, eh - given that it's now enshrined in US law that vaccine manufacturers can maim or kill people with total legal immunity.Tarrel wrote:In this particular case, immunisation is the answer, combined with a requirement that people entering the UK are able to show a vaccination certificate.
There were lots of problems with different types of phages (those that incorporate into the chromosome are no good, you need lytic ones) . We could do it now, but there are safety issues, some around your own immune system. TB resistance is down to letting people self medicate, as you need to keep taking them long after you feel well to kill the infection. People stop too early, which is ideal conditions for resistance to develop. Bill Gates and the Wellcome trust, amongst others, are funding new anti-TB drugs, which will take time to come on stream. A new, better vaccine is at large trial stage. As others have stated, vaccination is by far the best approach. The WHO has been warning about this for some time. Once we start getting serious deaths from this, the funding will go exponential.gug wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage
On wednesday its likely that link above wont work due to the SOPA blackout.
Anyway, as usual, nature has a way and that big pharma cant patent - which is why millions will probably die entirely unnecessarily.
and the reason you probably havent heard about it. - Been used in USSR since around the first world war.
Google phage therapy. For every bacteria, theres a phage. Its natures arms race with itself.
Fascinating Horizon documentary (from the early nineties i think) here...
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... 7515748990
Agreed. Aside from Gates and Buffet, very few people are spending serious money on this. When westerns are affected, it will be sorted. Think how much has been spent on AIDS - not because large chunks on Africa are dying, but because its an STD of rich, young people.featherstick wrote:You mean once we start getting serious deaths in the UK....
TB is a disease of poverty, poor nutrition, and overcrowding. Most of the countries struggling with MDR TB don't have decent health facilities or budgets to adequately nourish their patients and keep them taking their drugs. Some countries take positively perverse decisions - Turkmenistan has isolated all its MDR TB patients in the middle of nowhere, a real disincentive to go to a doctor. MDR TB is as much a political problem as a medical one.
