We Are Losing the War on Bacteria

We Are Losing the War on Bacteria

Seventy five years ago with the advent of penicillin we drastically reduced the number of deaths from pneumonia. Since then we have developed many more antibiotics. The problem is that bacteria mutate. With the mutations some of the bacteria become drug resistant.

Now we have what are called Super Bugs such as MRSA which are resistant to most of the antibiotics available today. There are several factors that have increased the speed with which superbugs are created. The less antibiotics used the longer it takes to produce super bugs, however some doctors have given their patients antibiotics for the common cold which is ineffective. Some patients don’t take their full regimen of antibiotics so the illness comes back and they have to take more.

Live stock are given antibiotics in their food. A three year old girl caught a new variety of MRSA from pigs. Pigs in Europe, England, Canada and the United States all have this variety of MRSA.

When someone goes to the hospital with Pneumonia they need to give them an antibiotic right away so the infection does not spread to the rest of the body. Doctors give the right antibiotic about 50% of the time.  Sense it takes up to seventy two hours to test for the type of bacteria causing the Pneumonia they have to guess which antibiotic this bacteria is resistant to. If the Doctor doesn't find the right antibiotic quickly the patient will die.Some doctors feel we will shortly be back to where we were 75 years ago with many more people dying from pneumonia.

Around Twenty years ago I saw a television show about how they treated bacterial infections in Russia. Instead of using antibiotics they used a virus called bacteriophage. It was harmless to humans but would kill the bacteria that was causing the sickness.The treatment came in ten doses that the patient would take for ten days. They charged $2.00 for the treatment. A
persons immune system will get rid of the bacteriophage within 7 days

The problem we have in this country is that Bacteriophage can't be patented. Here it costs up to eight hundred million to bring a drug to market. Once the testing on a bacteriophage was done anyone could manufacture the doses and sell them because there is no patent. This would reduce the price of the treatment too drastically, making it so a drug company wouldn't be able recoup the costs of testing and bringing the drug to market.

We need to change the laws so that drugs that are not profitable to the drug companies are brought to market.