All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Last-Ditch Resistance: More Countries, More Dire Results – Phenomena: Germination

Laurent Poirel and colleagues in Switzerland have identified an E. coli strain, recovered from an 83-year-old Swiss man who was hospitalized last month, that possesses both colistin resistance and also VIM resistance to the carbapenems, the family of antibiotics that was considered the last and toughest before colistin. The colistin-resistance gene shared a plasmid with genes conferring resistance to chloramphenicol, flofenicol and co-trimoxazole. The authors warn, “Such accumulation of multidrug resistance traits may correspond to an ultimate step toward pandrug resistance.”Our data suggest that the advent of untreatable infections has already arrived.Marisa Haenni and collaborators in France and Switzerland queried the Resapath network in France, which conducts surveillance for antibiotic resistance in animals, found that 21 percent of bacterial samples collected from veal calves on French farms between 2005 and 2014 carried the signal of mobile colistin resistance, the gene mcr-1. There were 106 positive samples (out of 517) and they came from 94 different farm properties. On seven of those isolates, the mcr gene lived alongside ones for ESBL resistance—that’s to penicillins and to the first three generations of cephalosporin drugs—and also genes for resistance to sulfa drugs and tetracycline.

Source: Last-Ditch Resistance: More Countries, More Dire Results – Phenomena: Germination

Last-Ditch Resistance: More Countries, More Dire Results – Phenomena: Germination

Laurent Poirel and colleagues in Switzerland have identified an E. coli strain, recovered from an 83-year-old Swiss man who was hospitalized last month, that possesses both colistin resistance and also VIM resistance to the carbapenems, the family of antibiotics that was considered the last and toughest before colistin. The colistin-resistance gene shared a plasmid with genes conferring resistance to chloramphenicol, flofenicol and co-trimoxazole. The authors warn, “Such accumulation of multidrug resistance traits may correspond to an ultimate step toward pandrug resistance.”Our data suggest that the advent of untreatable infections has already arrived.Marisa Haenni and collaborators in France and Switzerland queried the Resapath network in France, which conducts surveillance for antibiotic resistance in animals, found that 21 percent of bacterial samples collected from veal calves on French farms between 2005 and 2014 carried the signal of mobile colistin resistance, the gene mcr-1. There were 106 positive samples (out of 517) and they came from 94 different farm properties. On seven of those isolates, the mcr gene lived alongside ones for ESBL resistance—that’s to penicillins and to the first three generations of cephalosporin drugs—and also genes for resistance to sulfa drugs and tetracycline.

Source: Last-Ditch Resistance: More Countries, More Dire Results – Phenomena: Germination

Study shows high resistance to first-line malaria treatment | CIDRAP

More resistance woes possibleIn an accompanying commentary, however, two US Army experts caution that resistance to mefloquine is likely to return quickly now that artesunate-mefloquine has replaced dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine in Cambodian areas where artemisinin resistance is common.The writers are David Saunders, MD, MPH, of the US Army Medical Materiel Development Activity at Fort Detrick, Md., and Chanthap Lon, MD, of the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences in Phnom Penh.With other effective drug combinations lacking, they suggest, one way to fight resistant malaria in Cambodia would be to hospitalize all malaria patients to ensure full adherence to treatment. They note that that approach is used successfully in the country’s tuberculosis control program.

Source: Study shows high resistance to first-line malaria treatment | CIDRAP

Projects and convictions…

In all that I do, I strive to always become a servant to others. I am submissive by nature, and people have learned to really taken advantage of it at times. I, however, have allowed it for periods of time, as I am willing to serve others.

In recent conversations with entities around Ohio, they have failed to understand that my cultural upbringing is a vital reason to why I’m so disposed to behave this way. I don’t just let anybody walk all over me, but I will allow for the person to correct their behavior, if they do not, I am not a slave, just a servant. 
It is an idea lost on many. From some of those that know me well, I have heard that they would have long ago left their families to struggle on their own had they been me, but I do not see how I could walk out on any of them, bar my dad, and live with a clean conscience. For me serving and being submissive are part of a personal identity and not just a cultural or faith aspect. I can only hope that people see my actions, not as those of someone who is out of touch with reality, but as those of someone who hopes for the best for others (not in others).

James Lovelock: ‘enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan’ | Environment | The Guardian

Humanity is in a period exactly like 1938-9, he explains, when “we all knew something terrible was going to happen, but didn’t know what to do about it”. But once the second world war was under way, “everyone got excited, they loved the things they could do, it was one long holiday … so when I think of the impending crisis now, I think in those terms. A sense of purpose – that’s what people want.”

Source: James Lovelock: ‘enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan’ | Environment | The Guardian

 

I’d like to think he is wrong, I really do. I think, however, that he is right and that we are already past the tipping point for changes that will force those left, after all all the eco-disasters to find a way of living in nature in a way that will enable us not to kill millions of humans because of shortsightedness, hubris and delusion.