Humanity about to succumb to drug-resistant fungi and bacteria

[Ex-User (14663)]

The recent rate of emergence of pathogenic fungi that are resistant to the limited number of commonly used antifungal agents is unprecedented.
[...]
One consequence is an increasing risk in human health care from naturally occurring opportunistic fungal pathogens that have acquired resistance to this broad class of chemicals.

Worldwide emergence of resistance to antifungal drugs challenges human health and food security

The recent rate of emergence of pathogenic fungi that are resistant to the limited number of commonly used antifungal agents is unprecedented. The azoles, for example, are used not only for human and animal health care and crop protection but also in ...

science.sciencemag.org

The real implications of spreading drug resistance will be felt the world over, with developing countries and large emerging nations bearing the brunt of this problem. Routine surgeries and minor infections will become life- threatening once again and the hard won victories against infectious diseases of the last fifty years will be jeopardised.
[...]
Drug resistant infections are already on the rise with numbers suggesting that up to 50,000 lives are lost each year to antibiotic-resistant infections in Europe and the US alone.

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One particular case which has been seen recently: Candida auris. It's been popping up over the last decade and is resistant to pretty much everything we have.

Will this finally give us a chance to experience a real-life post-apocalyptic world, the likes of which we have seen in games and movies?

discuss

 

[Tomten]

I hope not because it sounds like I'd forced to do a lot of work to ensure my survival. I'm much too gluttonous and indolent for a world like that.

Yeh yeh, it also kinda sucks that a lot of people would die.

 

[lightfire]

Nature eventually finds a way to outsmart humans and reclaim the earth that we destroyed :0

 

[a_ghost_from_your_past]

Humanity not, industrialized west, perhaps.
Candida is not very severe.
Might shave off some extra fat from sedentary life forms at worst.

 

[onesteptwostep]

Idk they said simliar apocalyptic things with bees but meh? Interesting news though.

 

[Hadoblado]

Whether or not someone was wrong about bees has no bearing on Serac's claim.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

I guess what people feel about this sort of stuff is exemplified by (stupendously naive) counterarguments to things like global warming; they say "ya'll eggheads were talking about rising sea levels 10 years ago, yet here we are, alive and well".

It's been only about 90 years since Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. Prior to that, infections that are trivial today were often lethal. As they write in the quoted sources, multi-resistant infections are on the rise, so we might end up back at square one at some point.

Add to this the fact that the proliferating use of antibiotics speeds up the evolutionary processes giving rise to resistant bacteria (some geniuses out there use antibiotics against common colds), and you have a potent mix.

 

[CatGoddess]

Add to this the fact that the proliferating use of antibiotics speeds up the evolutionary processes giving rise to resistant bacteria (some geniuses out there use antibiotics against common colds), and you have a potent mix.

Why is using antibiotics against colds bad (aside from wasting money)? I mean, the cold's a virus; it's not going to become resistant. It'll be ineffectual at worst.

Although, your general point - my English class was reading the book Mountains Beyond Mountains, in which a travelling American doctor works on treating Multiple Drug Resistant TB in South America and Russia. It was looking pretty bleak, but he convinced WHO and some philanthropists that, y'know, MDRTB in developing nations is really not good news for the Western world. So they did manage to start a better treatment program by lobbying for lower prices on second-line antibiotics.

I think the main issue with the drug-resistant bacteria is not that we can't treat them, it's that we haven't been investing in developing new antibiotics because we think we don't need to and because it's just not very profitable right now. A new outbreak of superbacteria (that directly affects 1st world countries because, duh, who cares about kids dying in Haiti???) would certainly make the research go at a faster pace, though a large portion of the population could potentially be wiped out before the new antibiotics are developed...

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

@CatGoddess I definitely think it's something that get surprisingly little attention. One would think it should be possible to politicize the shit out of this stuff, even more so than global warming. Rising sea levels is too abstract for most people. Whereas the idea of catching a bug that makes you piss out of your ass until you die? Now that should catch people's attention

as for the antibiotics against colds, the important part is simply that people take antibiotics. Meaning, they kill some bacteria in their body and essentially conduct an artificial process of natural selection.

side note: an epidemiologist once told me that superbacteria are actually very common and they live in people's bodies without them knowing. Usually such bacteria live in symbiosis with the host, so nothing bad happens and there are no symptoms. Or something like that.

 

[Pizzabeak]

It's something we all had been worrying about since youth. If we want to solve any problems it would be thinking about our grandchildren and the world they'd be inhabiting.

Someone has got to do it if it's a dirty job, not everyone is educated enough to manage a project, and if no one manages the power supplies, it might all shut down for everyone. No one really gets anywhere by highlighting the differences between any cumulative effort or grinded work hours put in, against a poetic chanting or melody, somewhat being bardic in nature as it were, which is just describing it. Not everyone is an observer. I think INTPs are the judgers and Js the perceivers.

You could say people, if taken in a room, are DNA machines capable of reproduction. All the information in strands can potentially be a-broken down into its component parts revealing underlying schemata which would only maintain an efficient enough understanding to keep the stabilized structure spinning coherently within a theoretical framework. Keeping in mind the billions of people alive and existing on this planet, even as we speak, not all the nerds in the pipeline end up successful out of college with a job or career and equipped with all the financial training needed to live an active life.

 

[Cognisant]

This seems a lot like bushfires, every year you prevent bushfires the fuel accumulates until you get an uncontrollable bushfire, likewise modern medicine is a victim of its own success, preventing this year's outbreak only makes the outbreak next year worse until we all end up like the Quarians from Mass Effect because a lack of selective pressure breeds weakness.

The conflict between whether people should be vaccinated or not actually has nothing to do with vaccination itself and everything to do with our presumptions about the future. Everyone understands (on some level) that evolution works by the principle of "use it or lose it" so the more we come to rely on immunization to prevent disease the more reliant we will become on immunization to prevent disease. For people like myself this is a non-issue, in a couple hundred years from now I doubt biology and mechatronics will be separate fields (biomechatronics is already a thing) whereas some people think that having a naturally strong immune system is important because... I don't know.

The bushfires metaphor only applies while there's still a metaphorical bush to metaphorically catch fire.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

A percentage of people will die similar to what happened during the Black Death before modern medicine existed. People are able to develop resilience to drug resistant pathogens and they can evolve too.

Humanity would not end, it would be a major crisis that would not threaten the civilization.

 

[a_ghost_from_your_past]

The thing is that your type of right wing scare mongers don't have the science behind your "considerationism", while global warming is nearly (climate change deniers and flat earthers exceptioning) universally accepted.

LOAD YOUR GUN.
SHOOT IT FOR EFFECT.
YOU WON'T MAKE AN IMPRESSION UPON US.
YOUR TIME IS LONG OVERDUE.

 

[baccheion]

Should've just stuck with iodine in most cases..

 

[redbaron]

good =)

 

[Viaterum Orbis]

What about bacteria-eating viruses? Maybe it's time to leave aside fungus and think about these freaks. Dunno, might be our salvation.

 

[lightfire]

what if viruses are aliens who are trying to kill us

 

[Viaterum Orbis]

In that case bacteria are aliens too, among with fungus as the Earth mightiest hero in an all-open warfare of global control

 

[lightfire]

yeah but then the virus is small enough to enter the nucleus and reprogram our dna to KILL US FROM THE INSIDE

 

[Polaris]

We need microorganisms, not just for the sake of maintaining physical health, but microorganisms also serve as necessary population control and indirect promotion of strong genetic material. Disease culls the weaker individuals of a population that has reached its limits for sustainability and leaves behind the fittest genetic material, which means the strongest individuals survive and can carry their strong genetic material into future generations, ensuring the successful promotion of a healthier population. So far humans, because of their brains, have managed to turn this process on its head, meaning we have reached population numbers far above reasonable sustainability limits. We are extremely weird in that respect.

However, small lifeforms such as cockroaches, rodents and most microorganisms are all successful as they are able to proliferate fast, investing their energy into numbers rather than individual longevity. How many long- lived animals are successful? Not many....except humans -- again a seeming aberration.

Any time there is isolation of populations or unsustainable competition for resources, either through overpopulation or through some catastrophic event, natural processes will quickly weed out the weak. In my home town in Norway, there were quite a few cases of inbreeding with the resulting unsettling cases of individuals moving about town. Suicide rates were high, and those families were certainly affected. However, in the case of humans, recovery is currently outweighing destruction as populations are growing exponentially in certain parts of the world.

Intelligence is irrelevant to the selection process so watch out weak-ass, egghead INTPs. But intelligence has served a purpose in what first appears to be the so-called success of humans. However, upon looking closer, humans now consist of an excess of weak individuals requiring excessive resources for their maintenance (aging populations in first world countries), and adding to that, humans are literally in the process of destroying the very last foundations of their existence - nature. You don't need a degree in ecology or distracting climate change debates to understand that - just take a world tour via Google Earth and it will become obvious. Humans are going to have to come up with some very drastic and probably eventually, quite unethical solutions.

I am personally not planning an extended hospital stay, should I become weakened by disease. I am also not going to trample the paths that others are now trampling - for the sake of "the experience". My love for the nature that I come from exceeds my need to be part of it, so I stay at home and do what I can with my mind. Go climb Everest and contribute to the growing dung of dead bodies for the sake of ticking that box - I will not be joining in.

 

[baccheion]

We need microorganisms, not just for the sake of maintaining physical health, but microorganisms also serve as necessary population control and indirect promotion of strong genetic material. Disease culls the weaker individuals of a population that has reached its limits for sustainability and leaves behind the fittest genetic material, which means the strongest individuals survive and can carry their strong genetic material into future generations, ensuring the successful promotion of a healthier population. So far humans, because of their brains, have managed to turn this process on its head, meaning we have reached population numbers far above reasonable sustainability limits. We are extremely weird in that respect.

However, small lifeforms such as cockroaches, rodents and most microorganisms are all successful as they are able to proliferate fast, investing their energy into numbers rather than individual longevity. How many long- lived animals are successful? Not many....except humans -- again a seeming aberration.

Any time there is isolation of populations or unsustainable competition for resources, either through overpopulation or through some catastrophic event, natural processes will quickly weed out the weak. In my home town in Norway, there were quite a few cases of inbreeding with the resulting unsettling cases of individuals moving about town. Suicide rates were high, and those families were certainly affected. However, in the case of humans, recovery is currently outweighing destruction as populations are growing exponentially in certain parts of the world.

Intelligence is irrelevant to the selection process so watch out weak-ass, egghead INTPs. But intelligence has served a purpose in what first appears to be the so-called success of humans. However, upon looking closer, humans now consist of an excess of weak individuals requiring excessive resources for their maintenance (aging populations in first world countries), and adding to that, humans are literally in the process of destroying the very last foundations of their existence - nature. You don't need a degree in ecology or distracting climate change debates to understand that - just take a world tour via Google Earth and it will become obvious. Humans are going to have to come up with some very drastic and probably eventually, quite unethical solutions.

I am personally not planning an extended hospital stay, should I become weakened by disease. I am also not going to trample the paths that others are now trampling - for the sake of "the experience". My love for the nature that I come from exceeds my need to be part of it, so I stay at home and do what I can with my mind. Go climb Everest and contribute to the growing dung of dead bodies for the sake of ticking that box - I will not be joining in.

The "fittest" are usually the simplest. You're talking about regression.

What if.. a virus is like sperm?

 

[Polaris]

The "fittest" are usually the simplest. You're talking about regression.

What if.. a virus is like sperm?

Not sure what you mean by regression, but my intention with the post was just describing how nature works in terms of some of the processes that drive evolution, and how population dynamics are similar for all life forms. Disease as a controlling mechanism. I don't really care for what is better or worse, but I guess humans are typically emotionally invested in the aspects of human evolution that are important or desirable to them, because...reasons.

Evolution is just adaptation through different environmental pressures, it has no purpose, direction or "improvement" agenda, as in, the human concept of improvement. If you mean regression in evolutionary terms, this is just means features that gradually disappear (or become obsolete) over time through lack of use (vestigiality), or through trade-offs with features more useful for the environmental context (see article below). Thus, regression in this context is neutral - it is an adaptation, not regression as in the more bro-sciency idea of "devolution", which is loaded with typical human emotional attachment to certain ideas of what constitutes "good" or "bad" adaptations.

Regression example article.

Virus like sperm? What do you mean? I think I understand what you are getting at but would you mind expanding on that?

 

[baccheion]

The "fittest" are usually the simplest. You're talking about regression.

What if.. a virus is like sperm?

Not sure what you mean by regression, but my intention with the post was just describing how nature works in terms of the processes that drive evolution, and how population dynamics are similar for all life forms. I don't really care for what is better or worse, but I guess humans are typically emotionally invested in aspects of human evolution that is important to them, because...reasons.

Evolution is just adaptation through different environmental pressures, it has no purpose, direction or "improvement" agenda, as in, the human concept of improvement. If you mean regression in evolutionary terms, this is just means features that gradually disappear (or become obsolete) over time through lack of use (vestigiality), or through trade-offs with features more useful for the environmental context (see article below). Thus, regression in this context is neutral - it is an adaptation, not regression as in the more bro-sciency idea of "devolution", which is loaded with typical human emotional attachment to certain ideas of what constitutes "good" or "bad" adaptations.

Regression example article.

Virus like sperm? What do you mean? Can you expand on that?

Regression: given free reign, all that would be left are bacteria and other basic organisms.

Humans do something unnatural: artificial selection via institutionalization and media influence. We are being led down a path decided by a handful of self-interested psychopathic idiots. In all likelihood, it's just stupid.

 

[Viaterum Orbis]

But humans passing over the natural barrier of darwinian selection shouldn't be like the entrance of a new stage for the species?

Sure, if a horde of rabbits with no predators grow without control they will eventually eat everything and die, but they are not aware of that. We do. Besides, ain't the trend in advanced countries to reduce the population growth ratio? It's pretty much like a stage (I saw it on a Kurzgesagt video once, but can't remember the title).

 

[ZenRaiden]

Just the side effects of antibiotics should stop doctors from over prescribing them. They dont just kill the bad bugs, but also the good bugs that your body needs.

Effectively bacteriology is still far from finished science. There is much to learn.