----- Original Message ----- From: Greg and April <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <snip> > It has been a little known problem ( most cases in hospitals ) since the > 70's ( I heard about it in the early to mid 80's), only in the last few > years has it become more prevalent due in part that anti-biotics have become > such a part of every day life in the last 5-10 years.
One of the biggest problems aside from overprescription of antibiotics is miss-use of antibiotics by those to whom they are prescribed. An example here is the failure to complete a course of prescribed antibiotics. Patient feels better so stops taking antibiotics because of side effects. Bacterial infection not completely killed off at this stage so conditions favour the growth of resistant strains. I remember thjat there was concern for this very reason in America in the 70s/80s?. Tuberculosis was rapidly outstripping antibiotic development. > Walk down the soap section in the supermarket and you will see at least half > a dozen that claim 'anti-biotic' abilities, for that matter, look at the > Lysol advertisements, they say out right "anti-bacterial action - kills > 99.9% of germs" (what about that .1% that it does not kill?). Go to the > first aid area of the same store, and you will see dozens of first aid > cream's, gel's, and spray's that are anti-bacterial in nature. Anti-bacterial is quite different to antibiotic. Antibiotics inhibit the growth of bacteria, anti-bacterial kill/poison the bacteria and probably us too if we ingested them. My Doctor tells the story of his father (also a Doctor) stationed in New Guinea during WW2. Air crews were required to be at readiness in their bombers for long hours. Blazing hot sun, cramped badly ventilated planes, plenty of perspiration by crews. The fastidious ones showered many times a day, looking down on those who showered once a day. Guess which group suffered the most with skin infections etc. My Doc suggests avoiding medicated anti-bacterial soap for the same reason. > > Modern farm practices such as crowded and unsanitary condition's contribute > to disease ( think the middle ages and the plague ), so the farmers give > medicine to prevent illness. Certain anti-biotics are also known to help > animals gain weight faster so to get the fastest weight gain possible the > animals are fed these anti-biotics by the pound. These same anti-biotics get > to humans in the form of hamburgers, chicken, and pork. This has grown from > almost nothing in the late 60's early 70's to a multi-million ( possibly > billion ) dollar industry today. As with all aspects of nature things are often quite complex especially when uninformed man meddles. Usually for one of the three great destroyers of rational thinking and action.IMHO Economics, Politics and Religion. Worked for many years in a Dairy Foods processing factory Lab. At one stage there was much noise made about lysteria bacteria. Blamed for spontaneous abortion I think. Very sensitive issue, so regulatory authority, set standards, comming down heavily on any factory found to test positive. Ironic thing was that lysteria is a fairly sensitive bacteria and its growth is suppressed by the normal bacterial mix present. However make everything squeaky clean and the listeria has free reign to flourish. Much the same as when herbicide is sprayed, what grows back first, weeds. Some of the cleanest factories were under threat of closure. <snip> > The way anti-biotics work, is they poison the bacteria. See above, inhibit the growth of the bacteria.. >Think of the > bacteria as ultra small rats, and the doctor as the exterminator, the doctor > prescribes the anti-biotic which poisons the bacteria. Like rats, if a > bacteria does not get a full dose of the poison, they become used to it, and > it then doesn't work like it should even in higher doses. > > This should not be able to happen with phages, because they look upon > bacteria as food. Think of the bacteria as micro passenger pigeons that were > hunted to extinction and the phages as the human hunters of the pigeons. A > phages lives (if you can call it that) to kill bacteria, they "infect" the > bacteria with their own DNA then uses the bacteria own body to multiply new > phages inside, and when the new phages burst out the bacteria is dead. > Unlike the anti-biotic poison, the bacteria do not have a chance to build up > an immunity. Used to have to work around Phages in the cheese manufacturing section of the Dairy Factory. They tend to build up. If you used the same culture for subsequent batches of cheese there would come a time when you would get a dead vat. Either cultures are rotated so that subsequent ones are not affected by the phages specific to the previous or a mix of culture strains is used, if one strain gets knocked out the others do the job. Dead vats can also be caused by residual antibiotics from treatment of cows suffering from mastitis using antibiotics, antibiotic is usually stained blue. This shows up in milk, alerts farmer of presence. All milk delivered to factory tested by monitoring the growth rate of an antibiotic sensitive culture in sample of milk. Farmers often send in samples of milk from treated cows to determine weatherhat cows milk is antibiotic free. Antibiotic screening is important not only for the success of cultured dairy products (cheese, yoghurt, sour cream, cultured buttermilk etc) but also to protect those consumers sensitive to antibiotics. Certainly fascinating things phages, don't know of many beneficial uses of them though. Regards, Paul Gobert.> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Sell a Home with Ease! http://us.click.yahoo.com/SrPZMC/kTmEAA/ySSFAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. 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