Life finds a way ... always/rev II

The more we mess with livestock, the larger blowback becomes. To whit.

Eighteen months ago, a gene that confers resistance to colistin — known as an ‘antibiotic of last resort’ — emerged in bacteria from pigs in China. Since then, the resistance gene, called mcr-1, has been found around the world at an alarming rate, according to several presentations at the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, last week.

In some places, nearly 100% of farm animals carry mcr-1, and an increasing number of people do as well. The gene’s spread is one of the clearest examples of how antibiotic use on farms can lead to resistance in human infections, says Lance Price, an antibiotic researcher at George Washington University in Washington DC.

Colistin has been around since the 1950s, but was rarely used in people because it causes kidney problems. Instead, many countries use it to promote growth in livestock — a practice that seems to have selected for colistin-resistant bacteria. That’s a problem, because physicians have increasingly turned to colistin over the past decade to treat patients who don’t respond to other antibiotics.

“It’s a crappy drug and I think this is a sign of our desperation that we are so concerned about the loss of a toxic antibiotic,” says Price.

Now take this manipulation of nature a step further with increased use of pesticides, herbicides and GMOs and add to this potent mix, environmental degradation and globals warming and one sees slow motion disaster looming with initial evidence pointing to less honeybees to pollinate crops, less monarchs to spread beauty around the world and corporate ownership of our food supply not to mention rampant pollution of the world's oceans and the acceleration of global warming that is rendering researchers speechless. Mankind is at a crossroads in terms of survival, the question here is, are we going to do something about it before it's too late?

No one knows, do one? - Fats Waller