This isn’t news. The alarm bells have been clanging away for decades. One of the scariest, is drug-resistant TB. I understand there’s also drug-resistant leprosy, but that doesn’t transmit easily.
I’m old enough to remember that penicillin cured almost everything. You started a 10-day course, and felt better in a day and a half.
The problem was that many folks stopped taking it, when they felt better.
These days, American meat is absolutely overflowing with antibiotics. I don’t know if there’s any kind of serious effort to address that.
> The problem was that many folks stopped taking it, when they felt better.
This really wasn't the problem. There was never any strong science behind it, other than just an abundance of caution. But you can also argue that taking antibiotics for an extra week is bad because it prolongs the evolutionary pressure on microbes to develop resistance.
Either way, stuff like that is inconsequential. Most drug-resistant strains crop up in hospice and hospital settings where immunocompromised or gravely ill patients are kept on a cocktail of antibiotics for months or years, and resistant bacteria have a significant advantage and can spread easily.
And it's not like we have a good alternative to that - "let more people die earlier" is not an easy sell.
This is possibly followed by overuse of antibiotics in animal husbandry, although that part is more complicated than usually implied.
Where the logic made no sense was optional repeats. I would get told "here is one course, if you dont feel better, you can take this script for the second". So after five days you finish the first and if you feel better its fine to stop. But if you take one pill from course 2, well you better finish it or you'll be breeding resistance.
It doesn't have any prominent names attached, which means it's still the existing civil service types who are just trying to do their jobs. Which they'll keep doing, until they they get DOGEd. Or they can't take it any more.
This isn’t news. The alarm bells have been clanging away for decades. One of the scariest, is drug-resistant TB. I understand there’s also drug-resistant leprosy, but that doesn’t transmit easily.
I’m old enough to remember that penicillin cured almost everything. You started a 10-day course, and felt better in a day and a half.
The problem was that many folks stopped taking it, when they felt better.
These days, American meat is absolutely overflowing with antibiotics. I don’t know if there’s any kind of serious effort to address that.
> The problem was that many folks stopped taking it, when they felt better.
This really wasn't the problem. There was never any strong science behind it, other than just an abundance of caution. But you can also argue that taking antibiotics for an extra week is bad because it prolongs the evolutionary pressure on microbes to develop resistance.
Either way, stuff like that is inconsequential. Most drug-resistant strains crop up in hospice and hospital settings where immunocompromised or gravely ill patients are kept on a cocktail of antibiotics for months or years, and resistant bacteria have a significant advantage and can spread easily.
And it's not like we have a good alternative to that - "let more people die earlier" is not an easy sell.
This is possibly followed by overuse of antibiotics in animal husbandry, although that part is more complicated than usually implied.
I've heard it's actually just completely wrong. The earlier you stop taking antibiotics the faster the selective pressure for resistance goes away.
stopping when you feel better might actually just be better, though I'd have to go find that reference again.
Eg: https://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3418
Where the logic made no sense was optional repeats. I would get told "here is one course, if you dont feel better, you can take this script for the second". So after five days you finish the first and if you feel better its fine to stop. But if you take one pill from course 2, well you better finish it or you'll be breeding resistance.
I think a major problem nowadays is that we use antibiotics in absurd amounts in the meat industry.
So is this news coming from the US health officials we can trust or the ones we can't?
It doesn't have any prominent names attached, which means it's still the existing civil service types who are just trying to do their jobs. Which they'll keep doing, until they they get DOGEd. Or they can't take it any more.
we can trust it, but also we've been sounding the alarm for decades. it's just background noise now
It depends on if it's followed up by saying the cure is beef tallow or not
“Changes in Carbapenemase-Producing Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacterales, 2019 to 2023”
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-02404
Can't even read the abstract without paying. That's a new low.
It’s an arms race between humans and bacteria.
On one side, bacteria have short lifecycles and huge populations, letting them mutate quickly to evade antibiotics, vaccines, or immune defenses.
On the other, humans don’t rely on slow genetic evolution - we adapt with medicine, vaccines, hygiene, and now faster tools like mRNA platforms.
The danger isn’t that we'll be "out-evolved" forever, but that we have to keep innovating or fall behind.
Ok, so we have Zerg and Terran. Now we just need something to fill in as Protoss. Somehow I don't think LLMs are it.
So now they believe in evolution?
These aren't the officials you're thinking about LOL.