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The Return of Infectious Disease
Summary --
After wiping out smallpox and winning other battles against the microbes, modern medicine ran into the aids virus. With urbanization and jet travel bringing people together in greater concentrations and more rapidly, infectious diseases are enjoying new opportunities to spread--and to evolve drug-resistant and more lethal strains. Advances in genetics make the threat of biological warfare even more threatening. It is time to write a better prescription for public health.
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Comments
Return of Infectious Disease
Sewer plants across the nation are shown to enhance antibiotic resistance. Byproducts of sewage processing such as biosolids (sewage sludge) as applied to American farmlands are leave a wake of antibiotic resistance in near by water bodies. The use of chlorine is now showing an enhancement of virulence factors in very serious pathogens such as MRSA. The use of recycled water that is used to irrigate municipal greenscape has been shown to carry pathogens and antibiotic resistant pathogens. The indicator organisms used to test sewage as well as reclaimed water bear little relationship to the contained pathogens and thus give a false indication of safety. Unfortunately, the U.S. EPA refuses to deal with these issues effectively. This failure may be one of the reasons we are seeing an advancement of community acquired antibiotic resistance.
Amy Pruden's work on antibiotic resistant genes demonstrated that these are now found in drinking water. The genetic information can thus intermix with the gut flora and accordingly become available to incoming pathogens, hence rendering them unresponsive to antibiotics.
Until the public becomes better educated in these areas, the regulators will continue to look the other way. This is a national tragedy, but those are the facts.