Pollution with antibiotics leads to resistant bacteria

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.sahlgrenska.gu.se/english/news_and_events/news/News_Detail/pollution-with-antibiotics-leads-to-resistant-bacteria.cid979203

Pollution with antibiotics leads to resistant bacteria

News: Feb 17, 2011

Many of the substances in our most common medicines are manufactured in India. Some of these factories release huge quantities of drugs to the environment. Swedish scientists now show that bacteria in polluted rivers become resistant to a range of antibiotics. International experts fear that this may contribute to the development of untreatable infectious diseases world-wide.

Using a novel method, based on large-scale DNA sequencing, the Swedish scientists show that bacteria residing in Indian rivers are full of resistance genes, protecting them from otherwise effective antibiotics.

"Since we buy medicines from India, we share moral responsibility to reduce the pollution,"says Joakim Larsson, associate professor at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, one of the scientists behind the study.

"If the pollution contributes to resistance development in clinically important bacteria, it becomes our problem also in a very direct way," he says.

"We have combined large-scale DNA sequencing with novel ways to analyze data to be able to search for thousands of different antibiotic resistance genes in parallel," says Erik Kristiansson, assistant professor at Chalmers University of Technology.

…

http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0017038

[Taverner]

1. Great. Now what are we going to do when the next superbug comes along?

And by superbug I mean antibiotic-resistant bacteria

[HereSince1628]

2. Hmm, we knew that a couple decades ago

this is an issue because???????

CAPITALISTS have taken advantage of the nation of INDIA!

So desperate for jobs, so easy to accomodate the needs of industry.

Well, there WAS a reason that there was regulation in the nations that were home to those technologies.

I guess India didn't understand what it was bargaining away.

Pity,

really.

[Maine_Nurse]

3. We're in the same boat

Between antibiotics being excreted in urine into wastewater treatment plants or groundwater, improper drug disposal, overuse of antibacterial soaps, and idiots not taking their entire prescribed regimen of antibiotics, we're due for some serious outbreaks of dangerous microbes.

[jwirr]

4. I have said for a long time that medicines are a national security

issue. We need to have them made here where we use them. I have thought that because of the idea of a collapse of our global system but this is another reason.