New antibiotic that kills drug-resistant bacteria found in technician's garden

And another major problem is that these antibiotics are found in nature.

Penicillin production was revolutionized when it moved to Peoria, IL and found the famous cantelope:

https://www.pjstar.com/story/news/local/2019/04/25/peoria-pl...

US is well known for its questionable high scale farming practices that often have no interest in any sort of animal welfare. Its one of the primary reasons for import controls across Europe for US meat products. It comes up every time the UK or EU negotiate trade deals with the US and came up extremely often during Brexit.

If those import markets were open European producers would struggle to compete with US-agri due to its sheer volume and lack of interest in animal welfare and/or disease control. The UK specifically suffered issues in the past with such issues via "Mad Cow Disease" in the 90s and has attempted to reform its practices as a consequence.

Conversely US agri still seems to ignore these existential nightmares, as most recently seen with Bird Flu and the new administration's troubling ideas with how to deal with it (e.g. the suggestion to avoid culls in order to "find resistent birds").

I don't know if there's much merit in opposing antibiotic use in cattle if that position is just a small coincidental component of your broader pro-disease ideology.

It took 30 years between Lenin's brother being executed by the state, and the Russian revolution. History has momentum, and the gains from the New Deal are still enough that many Americans dont feel comfortable putting their bodies on the line. People's dispositions are a function of their material reality and the reality is that most people haven't internalized the damage yet.

The average person doesn't have capacity to care about policies that lead to the long term development of drug-resistant bacteria.

We couldn't even convince everyone to wear masks, this won't be an issue people will rise up in mass protests for... People are literally being kidnapped and thrown into detention centers without due process and there are not massive protests.

It takes a lot to make people protest, this ain't a battle for it.

The relative usage isn't even the primary issue. The surrounding conditions are. Farms are ideal breeding grounds for quite a few reasons. Add to that rather barbaric practices that can result in treatment periods dragging on quite a bit and the result isn't at all surprising.

There is also a not insignificant portion of "animal antibiotics" that people buy to use themselves because they can't afford the 6x markup on "human" antibiotics plus the doctors fees only to get the same pill made in the same factory with a slightly different label slapped on it.

One use of antibiotics in the cattle industry is as a way of increasing weight in livestock. It's theoretically discouraged now for that purpose now in the US, but last I looked there were large loopholes for preventative health purposes in herd management

WTF

Is that true? Since it should not be imported / available let alone perscribed if it doesn't pass the checks. And especially in the US, a doctor wouldn't hand it out if it didn't have the right paperwork because they would be litigated out of their livelihood.

I wouldn't be surprised if they bin the good stuff for the export market.

This is why we use “cocktails” on resistant cases now.

Kill it three different ways at once and it cannot adapt fast enough to leave dna fragments for the next microbe to pick up and continue the work.

There may be some cost to each resistance gained, reducing the fitness of the bacteria

Antibiotics are not a deterrence because bacteria cannot be negotiated with. Similarly the concerns of fallout are minimal. The evolved resistance comes at a cost, evolving many resistances comes at many costs. There is a point where the bacteria cannot continue to evolve resistances yet remain competitive in the absence of the antibiotics.

AFAIK there is a new class of molecules specific to thwarting the resistance mechanism that makes the bacteria susceptible again in ways that cannot be out evolved. I'm looking for the general name for this technique - I do remember reading about it.

I don’t see the connection.

But we can see throughout history that the prevalence of disease follows closely with societies that raise animals. That said, I think it is a poor excuse for advocating against animal husbandry. Disease will always exist and spread, but keeping livestock and pets does increase the chances of it happening a bit.

>The good news is there is a constant bacteria on bacteria, fungus on bacteria chemical war going on - hence the paper.

The question is shouldn't we explore it more?

Put dangerous bacteria in contact with other bacteria, fungi, viruses, prisons, viroids, archaea and see what kill them, how and why?

> their patent is still owned by certain oligarchy.

I don’t know that it’s helpful to have such a blunt and un-nuanced take.

Theres no “certain oligarchy” that holds a single patent on "chemotherapy" as a broad concept, as it encompasses various chemical treatments for cancer. specific chemotherapy drugs and methods are patented by pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, for example:

- NanOlogy LLC: holds a patent for a method involving injecting large surface area microparticle taxanes directly into the tumor, combined with systemic delivery of immunotherapeutic agents.

- Johns Hopkins University: assigned patent rights for a method related to cancer treatment to Becton-Dickinson & Company, which then sublicensed them to Baxter.

- University of Cincinnati Clermont College: has a patent for breakthrough chemotherapy technology involving nanocarriers.

- Northeastern University: reports a patented molecule, WYC-209, that eliminates cancer cells.

> There are many chemo therapies from 60s still being used due to the fact their patent is still owned by certain oligarchy.

They must be making some novel improvements, though. Those original patents from the '60s are long expired by now.

Well, you actually want the body to clear things. That’s not a problem, it’s a feature. If the phage is able to target the bacteria before it is fully cleared, that’s all you need. Humans have been injected with phages and it has been shown to work. The Soviets actually did a lot of research on it, IIRC. The practical issue that is really challenging for broad phage therapy adoption is that phages are very specific to the bacteria they target. So, you can’t just get injected with any old phage and expect it to work. Instead, you need to catalog all the phages you find in a database and search for one that can target the specific bacteria the patient has been infected with. Phages are simply viruses that target bacteria. You’re awash in them all the time.

that seems like a good thing. they only infect bacteria, not humans

phages are found in large quantities in mucus, where they seemingly contribute to the barrier function of mucus by preying on any bacteria that try go cross

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23690590/

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1508355112

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01984-19

this might be adaptable for therapeutics

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48560-2

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-07269-0

They're viruses, so they work by infecting bacteria and making the bacteria create more of itself.

Antibiotics are found by isolating a compound some i.e. fungi naturally produces. We figure out how to produce the compound and don't fill people with fungi to produce it. Bacteriophages are already the analogy to the compound itself.

So we should be investing heavily in creating and distributing all variety of bacteriophage for all our common bacterial infections. 20k deaths/year from MRSA in the USA alone, 120k infections/year in USA and many of the survivors are left with life-long complications.

I'm sure people are studying them. But as GP said, antibiotic are lazy. A doctor would much rather prescribe an antibiotic than do the work to match the specific bacterial infection with the particular phage to deal with it.

And since antibiotics still work (for now), there's not all that much money in phage research. If we do get to the point where we "run out" of antibiotics due to bacterial resistance, I imagine phage research will become a lot more attractive as a destination for research funding.

I haven't watched the show, but your description just made me think about the "panacea". Virus-wise, I was obsessed with the idea of the DRACO antiviral concept for years.[0] It's really unclear why funding was pulled for it.

Then again, the idea behind "28 Days Later" was that everyone got a cancer vaccine and turned into zombies...

[0] https://riderinstitute.org/discovery/