[ExI] The post-antibiotic era

[rex]

BillK <pharos at gmail.com> [2013-11-20 15:06]:
>
>People will always consider personal risks to be far more important
>than vague large-scale threats.
>Especially when they can see a simple, specific cure for the problem -
>New antibiotics.

Antibiotics inevitably eventually fail due to a combination of one
species of bacteria developing resistance and horizontal gene
transfer between species of bacteria.

There are better approaches on the horizon.

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-two-new-techniques-to-fight-bacteria-without-antibiotics-101813

>The cure for large scale threats is neither obvious or
>straightforward, so let's solve the easier, more pressing problems
>first.

Easier? And, a reduction in the frequency of deaths due to antibiotic
resistance necessarily increases the frequency of deaths due to other
things. For example, a reduction in death rate due to cardiovascular
disease necessarily increases the death rate due to cancer, because we
all eventually die of _something_.

-rex
-- 
There are two kinds of geniuses: the "ordinary" and the "magicians."
An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good
as, if we were only many times better.  There is no mystery as to how
his mind works.  Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain
that we, too, could have done it.  It is different with the magicians.
Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark.
Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest calibre. --Mark Kac