# CDC: 'We've reached the end of antibiotics'



## Tacitus (Dec 30, 2012)

UK Daily Mail Online (click here for link to article):

A high-ranking official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared in an interview with PBS that the age of antibiotics has come to an end.

'For a long time, there have been newspaper stories and covers of magazines that talked about "The end of antibiotics, question mark?"' said Dr Arjun Srinivasan. 'Well, now I would say you can change the title to "The end of antibiotics, period."'

The associate director of the CDC sat down with Frontline over the summer for a lengthy interview about the growing problem of antibacterial resistance.
...
'We're in the post-antibiotic era,' he said. 'There are patients for whom we have no therapy, and we are literally in a position of having a patient in a bed who has an infection, something that five years ago even we could have treated, but now we can't.'


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## drfacefixer (Mar 8, 2013)

The Frontline Special is called "Hunting the nightmare bacteria." Half the show is about pan resistant strained of bacteria and the second half is about Industries pull out of future antibiotic research leaving Beyer as the only company currently with an antibiotic R&D team. They have been pressured to remain although they plan to shift to vaccine development instead because they have to answer to share holders. Medications to treat chronic diseases and vaccines are more lucrative. This is the direction of the free market. 

Antibiotics are expensive to research ($600M-$1B). Then to control resistance they must to restricted to use in only the sickest, for the shortest amount of time. With little use upfront, they are a slow profit return with initial astronomically high prices. Then of course, these sick patients have one of the highest ligation rates. No new antibiotics have been approved since 2009, and currently there are no more in tests with the FDA. This means no new ones for at least another 10 years. Welcome to overuse of antibiotics101.


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## Mase92 (Feb 4, 2013)

drfacefixer said:


> The Frontline Special is called "Hunting the nightmare bacteria." Half the show is about pan resistant strained of bacteria and the second half is about Industries pull out of future antibiotic research leaving Beyer as the only company currently with an antibiotic R&D team. They have been pressured to remain although they plan to shift to vaccine development instead because they have to answer to share holders. Medications to treat chronic diseases and vaccines are more lucrative. This is the direction of the free market.
> 
> Antibiotics are expensive to research ($600M-$1B). Then to control resistance they must to restricted to use in only the sickest, for the shortest amount of time. With little use upfront, they are a slow profit return with initial astronomically high prices. Then of course, these sick patients have one of the highest ligation rates. No new antibiotics have been approved since 2009, and currently there are no more in tests with the FDA. This means no new ones for at least another 10 years. Welcome to overuse of antibiotics101.


Well put, I believe that is an effect of, um, what's it call....oh, yeah, Capatilism. Working strictly for the bottom line.

Insurance companies, drug companies and mega corporation hospitals are not in the business of treating people, they are in the business of making money.


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## CrackbottomLouis (May 20, 2012)

I was just having this conversation with my clinical instructor on the medsurge floor past friday. I was shocked by the widespread use of what I understood were our "last line of defense" antibiotics. When I asked about it she said there was no choice and not many new antibiotics being held back. Welcome back to the age where an infection is quite possibly fatal. Peak antibiotics intead of peak oil?


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## FrankW (Mar 10, 2012)

Its been a long time coming.


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## Attila (Jan 30, 2011)

Mase92 said:


> Well put, I believe that is an effect of, um, what's it call....oh, yeah, Capatilism. Working strictly for the bottom line.
> 
> Insurance companies, drug companies and mega corporation hospitals are not in the business of treating people, they are in the business of making money.


That my friend is why there will never be a cure to cancer, or any other diseases. Too much $$$$ for the medical research field including universities, big pharmaceutical, and their lobbyist. President Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial Complex over fifty years ago. Medicine is just another aspect of the MIC. Too bad congress, with a few exceptions, along with the presidency has been bought and sold since 1960. In retrospect the die were cast before President Eisenhower ever spoke those prophetic words.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

Mase92 said:


> Well put, I believe that is an effect of, um, what's it call....oh, yeah, Capatilism. Working strictly for the bottom line.
> 
> Insurance companies, drug companies and mega corporation hospitals are not in the business of treating people, they are in the business of making money.


Just a little "Check your assumptions please."
You assert that "Capitalism" is the cause. First of all what has been happening in the U.S for the last century is certainly not free market capitalism, it just isn't as bad as true communism.

Assuming that capitalism is indeed the cause then there should be plenty of evidence to back up the theory, a cursory examination should bring up plenty of examples.
How successful have communist countries been at developing antibiotics? Russia and China in the past both attempted to remove the profit motive, scientists were paid by the government, did this lead to a plethora of new antibiotics being discovered?

In fact you may find with a little bit of research that "capitalist" countries have invented more drugs of EVERY type than others. So does it really make sense to blame capitalism or the "free market" when it has performed exponentially better than the alternatives?


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## Tacitus (Dec 30, 2012)

> Welcome to overuse of antibiotics101.


Clarification (not directed at the poster): The "overuse" is the overprescribing by doctors and the overuse on animals. It is not overuse by consumers of their prescriptions.

For example, I have a friend who never took all of his antibiotics (e.g., if he was prescribed 30 pills, he would take maybe 22 of them) because he read about the doctors overprescribing.

He thought the problem was that they were prescribing too many pills to each patient.

But in reality, the problem was that they were prescribing to too many patients. (The dosages were correct.)

He was contributing to the problem, because not fully taking the prescribed dose is more likely to allow some of the bacteria to survive...the strongest bacteria that is most immune to the prescribed antibiotic...and bacteria evolves to become stronger.

So, the problem is two fold: (1) writing too many prescriptions for antibiotics when the prescriptions are unneeded, and (2) under-taking by consumers/patients who get the prescriptions.

Patients make the situation worse if they don't take all their anti-biotics.

Every time I hear about "overuse" of antibiotics, I think of my friend, and I wonder if the media isn't making the problem worse by not being clear about what "overuse" means.


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## JayJay (Nov 23, 2010)

Attila said:


> That my friend is why there will never be a cure to cancer, or any other diseases. Too much $$$$ for the medical research field including universities, big pharmaceutical, and their lobbyist. President Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial Complex over fifty years ago. Medicine is just another aspect of the MIC. Too bad congress, with a few exceptions, along with the presidency has been bought and sold since 1960. In retrospect the die were cast before President Eisenhower ever spoke those prophetic words.


http://www.carnivora.com/about-carnivora.html

Has anyone here heard about this?? I'd need any pros and cons.
Dying of cancer isn't nice, so does anyone have any stories??

I am getting one each month for stocking in the fridge.


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## Mase92 (Feb 4, 2013)

cowboyhermit said:


> Just a little "Check your assumptions please."
> You assert that "Capitalism" is the cause. First of all what has been happening in the U.S for the last century is certainly not free market capitalism, it just isn't as bad as true communism.
> 
> Assuming that capitalism is indeed the cause then there should be plenty of evidence to back up the theory, a cursory examination should bring up plenty of examples.
> ...


I can agree with this.

Still doesn't change the fact that big biz and all I stated before doesn't hold true. Its all about the bottom line. Anti-biotics just are as sexy or the money maker other drugs are.


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## drfacefixer (Mar 8, 2013)

Attila said:


> That my friend is why there will never be a cure to cancer, or any other diseases. Too much $$$$ for the medical research field including universities, big pharmaceutical, and their lobbyist. President Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial Complex over fifty years ago. Medicine is just another aspect of the MIC. Too bad congress, with a few exceptions, along with the presidency has been bought and sold since 1960. In retrospect the die were cast before President Eisenhower ever spoke those prophetic words.


I wouldn't put medicine in the same category as building war machines. In centuries past, there were benefits and profits to reap with a large military. Not so much any more. I doubt the MIC would be sustainable if we didn't have so many allies to sell "defense systems" too.

As for cures and research, where there is money big business usually finds a way. You can only fault big pharma to a certain extent. They create drugs which have prolonged life, improved quality, and in turn make them money. We wouldn't have millions of people on ACEs, ARBs, BB, hyperlipidemia drugs, diabetic medication, antidepressents, RA medication, Asthma/COPD (the list goes on and on) if people would either make every attempt at healthy eating, exercise, and avoidance of risky behaviors.... or just die ALOT early. 
Does it suck that they have begun to focus more on drugs for chronic conditions? Sure, unless you're one of the millions of people benefiting from these developments. For a lot of these diseases a cure exists. A fair amount of those with diabetes II , HTN, HLD, OSA could be cured just with weight loss and lifestyle change if they are able. For some age, habits, and current ADL limit the ability to make changes - These meds are still helping them live much longer than they would have decades ago.

The fair amount of the scientific medical break throughs in the later half of this century have been from small start up companies, not large industry. Tremendous leaps have been made in cancer research and stem cell therapy for other diseases, but this has been largely in Academic institutions through NIH funding. The government steps in an fills the void when the market fails to do so and there is a need. It has done so in vaccination research, cancer, and a plethora of rare disorders which would never receive attention otherwise. Why do we know so much about the genetics of down syndrome, MDA, Histiocytosis, and a list of hundreds of other diseases? It's definitely not to make money.

There are well over 200 types of cancers, so its likely to take a while before we can say we can cure cancer. Currently there are a few have a very high recovery rate with current treatments - again thanks to research conducted in many disciplines in both academia and industry.

It will be interesting to see how government steps in once the rate in pan-resistant infections kill a number of people. Currently in the US the numbers are low. India is a hotspot. Coincidently, India also makes a large supply of the worlds older antibiotics and lacks in controlling their use.


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## NaeKid (Oct 17, 2008)

To add to this story ...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life...is-disrupting-our-microbiome/article19638563/

*Overuse of antibiotics is disrupting our microbiome*



> We may think of ourselves as just human, but we're really a mass of micro-organisms housed in a human shell.
> 
> Every person alive is host to about 100 trillion bacterial cells. They outnumber human cells 10-to-1 and account for 99.9 per cent of the unique genes in the body.
> 
> ...


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## tsrwivey (Dec 31, 2010)

*"The damaging effect of antibiotics on microbial diversity starts early, Blaser said. The average American child is given nearly three courses of antibiotics in the first two years of life, and eight more during the next eight years.*"

This kind of surprises me, I would've guessed the number of antibiotics for kids to be much higher, especially the 0-2 years age group.

They just need to figure out how to bottle the immune systems of pediatric doctors & nurses


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## Tirediron (Jul 12, 2010)

none of these problem are because of the fact that things have changed so much in the last 120 years and basic human intelligence across the board has probably dropped, human knowledge or perceived knowledge has increased exponentially, but so much of this time period humanity has been trying to defeat nature instead of working symbiotically with nature (not the stupid libtard don't ever cut down a tree method).


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## RevWC (Mar 28, 2011)

Tirediron said:


> none of these problem are because of the fact that things have changed so much in the last 120 years and basic human intelligence across the board has probably dropped, human knowledge or perceived knowledge has increased exponentially, but so much of this time period humanity has been trying to defeat nature instead of working symbiotically with nature (not the stupid libtard don't ever cut down a tree method).


Though I agree with you, It has become more about the money than the results. Unfortunately we have (I believe) abandoned nature and its proficiency in taking care of us to a bunch of large corporations with an absolute non-caring for anything but their income.


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## tsrwivey (Dec 31, 2010)

RevWC said:


> Though I agree with you, It has become more about the money than the results. Unfortunately we have (I believe) abandoned nature and its proficiency in taking care of us to a bunch of large corporations with an absolute non-caring for anything but their income.


Where do you think the money to do the research & get the medication to the consumer comes from? If not private companies, where? The government? And as that money is spend to fund the research, if they don't make more money to replace it, where are they going to get the money to do the research for the next drug? :dunno: if there is no profit, there is no research. yes, they have stockholders to answer to. Who owns that stock? Joe Citizen does in his retirement account. I'm not saying there's not corruption, dirty dealings, etc. there is in everything people do.

If the natural remedies worked so well, why did people start paying for medicine?  why give up the free & pay for something?


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## NaeKid (Oct 17, 2008)

tsrwivey said:


> If the natural remedies worked so well, why did people start paying for medicine?  why give up the free & pay for something?


Look at bottled water, or at home-oxygen-systems for those with no medical conditions that make them necessary. Why pay money to take the toll-road when the road a couple miles over is still free?

Smart business people find ways to make others pay for stuff they don't want or don't need or couldn't use properly anyway. It is all part of the advertising that costs companies billions of dollars each year (SuperBowl anyone?)


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

tsrwivey said:


> If the natural remedies worked so well, why did people start paying for medicine?  why give up the free & pay for something?


Because people don't know. They go to a doctor and the doctor has been trained by schools with ties to big pharma. Some of my doctors have tried to get me away from my supplements and herbs. Other doctors, not many, have suggested additional supplements. I believe this to be because of the way each doctor has directed his or her own studies after graduation.

Another thing you run into is patents. You can't patent natural treatments or cures so nobody is pushing them. Drug companies are noted for taking the natural cures, finding the active ingredient, and patenting that. For example, the emergency inhalers for asthma are a first cousin to caffeine yet nobody prescribes coffee.


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## tsrwivey (Dec 31, 2010)

Caribou said:


> Because people don't know. They go to a doctor and the doctor has been trained by schools with ties to big pharma. Some of my doctors have tried to get me away from my supplements and herbs. Other doctors, not many, have suggested additional supplements. I believe this to be because of the way each doctor has directed his or her own studies after graduation.


True, some doctors are more comfortable with "natural" remedies than others. In the doctor's defense, if a doctor tells you to take X natural remedy & you have a bad effect from it, that doctor can be held liable for damages. If there is no research to prove that remedy is safe &/or effective, he could be sued, fined, malpractice insurance premiums increased, or lose his license to practice altogether. Also, things are changing so fast in the medical field, it's really hard to keep up with all of he latest information.



Caribou said:


> Another thing you run into is patents. You can't patent natural treatments or cures so nobody is pushing them. Drug companies are noted for taking the natural cures, finding the active ingredient, and patenting that. For example, the emergency inhalers for asthma are a first cousin to caffeine yet nobody prescribes coffee.


Just because you can't patent something doesn't mean you can't make a killing on it, just check the vitamin, supplement, weight loss isle at Walmart.

They don't prescribe coffee because it doesn't work.

I'm a really simple kind of gal, I rarely take anything be it meds or supplements, but I've just never understood how anything in pill form can be considered "natural". :dunno:


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## drfacefixer (Mar 8, 2013)

Caribou said:


> Because people don't know. They go to a doctor and the doctor has been trained by schools with ties to big pharma. Some of my doctors have tried to get me away from my supplements and herbs. Other doctors, not many, have suggested additional supplements. I believe this to be because of the way each doctor has directed his or her own studies after graduation.
> 
> Another thing you run into is patents. You can't patent natural treatments or cures so nobody is pushing them. Drug companies are noted for taking the natural cures, finding the active ingredient, and patenting that. For example, the emergency inhalers for asthma are a first cousin to caffeine yet nobody prescribes coffee.


Caribou, What your talking about is Theophylline which does relax bronchial constriction. Its an older drug and has a lot of issues(palpitations and neurotoxicity) . Its a much slower onset than many of todays bronchodilators. The side effects are numerous. Caffeine is a very mild bronchodilator. (about 40% of the activity of theophylline and some of the other methyl xanthines). As TSRwivey stated it theoretically is a good idea, but doesn't pass the reality test. When your starving for air, a cup of coffee just isn't going to help _that _much.
As for emergency inhalers, the cost isn't the drug. albuterol and epinepherine will be and have been the standard of care for a long time. These drugs are cheap. Its the delivery systems that are costly. I buy epi at $6 a 1mg vial, but my epi pens are about $280. Why? because these drugs are emergency drugs and used as first line treatments in life saving situations. If the delivery system fails or the metered dose isn't consistent a life can easily be lost. I may have the ability to deliver emergency drugs 3 or more ways, but to sell it to the public it needs to be fool proof, simple, effective and safe. My favorite twinject epi was taken off market for this reason. It was an awesome delivery system that injected and then could be dismantled to give a second dose, however, it was too complex for the avg person in an emergency.


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## lazydaisy67 (Nov 24, 2011)

I think there could be many reasons for resistant bacteria. Not the least of which is related to our guts. If your gut is not functioning to its optimum your whole system has trouble fighting viruses and bacteria. I'm sure lots of people think that's silly, but I've experimented on myself and have found that when I am regularly drinking Keifer, eating my own homemade yogurt and eating lots of fiber I get sick less often. I also treat cuts, even those that have some obvious infection in them, with a plant from my yard. I rarely take an antibiotic, but if it's something that I cannot treat in any other way I will. I had an infected tooth last week (ouch) and did go on an antibiotic for that.


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