A woman dies of a superbug resistant to every available antibiotic in the US | Hacker News Reader

A woman dies of a superbug resistant to every available antibiotic in the US

statnews.com

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=superbug&sort=byPopularity&pre...

This story has been posted a handful of times now. See link for other discussions ^.

Necessary knee-jerking wake-up call: Antibiotics should be rationed, those prescribed (after culturing) must be assured they are taken by some automatic/interactive means and it should be a felony to pill-mill them for a cold; otherwise, without rapid r&d, we're going to lose the survival arms race.

I saw a few articles last year that said something about new meds that can replace antibiotics (or are even better antibiotics, I don't know), but they aren't approved yet.

As far as I understand it, the problem here isn't that we lose an arms race because we don't have alternatives, but because of our approval systems.

When enough antibiotics lost their effects, laws will probably be changed OR it will take long enough till we got the alternatives in the marked.

Let's be clear here, she was in her 70's and received a majority of her care in India, not the US.

And she had a bone infection, very hard to treat even without resistant bacteria.

Let's be realistic here, she had the infection for YEARS... The odds are very high that the bacteria started out fairly normal and became resistant over time

From yesterday -

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13391886

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13402726

I don't know why, but I have a faint hope that some day AI and Machine learning will help solve these problems. Problems like these, and selectively killing cancer cells. Of course, just a hope.

1 person out of 300,000,000 has died that's linked to drug resistant superbug.

Hardly a problem.

Of course AI could also just solve the problem by killing anyone who has superbugs, so that the spread of such things is eradicated.

Of course AI could also just solve the problem by killing anyone who has superbugs, so that the spread of such things is eradicated.

That wouldn't work if the infectious stage of contamination comes before any obvious symptoms present themselves. Certainly in the case of colds and influenza the symptoms that make you look/feel unwell come days after you've been passing it to other people.

Relevant: https://xkcd.com/1612/, especially alt-text: "The contagious period ends right around when you start to sound sick over the phone, which is probably evidence of cold viruses evolving to spread optimally in the workplace.".

The article mentions that this isn't the first such case. It is just a more recent example.

Furthermore, there are multiple examples of bacteria that are resistant to families of antibiotics, which indicates the direction of the trend.

If we don't consider it a problem now, when should we?

> If we don't consider it a problem now, when should we?

What we should, does not matter. When it starts to cost money, or when there is an opportunity to earn money, then things will change.

I hope you will see this message before I get downvoted, but every time I hear such opinion, I wonder about person's character...

So - would you say the same thing, if that one person happen to be your mother, or a son?

Keeping perspective means exactly what about my character?

Read this. "The Potential Trajectory of Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae, an Emerging Threat to Health-Care Facilities, and the Impact of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Toolkit"[0]

[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4772438/

Bacteria are called bugs now? This calls for action.

And so it begins...

Nothing really new for the pharmaceutical community tbh. The MRSA - which is probably the most well known superbug - has been around for years and claimed more deaths than AIDS per year in the US last time I checked.

There was an article pointing out that a techniques based on combination of ATBs + Bacteriophages might be a possible replacement. Another possible counter-measure is nano-tech.

If states do not jump-in funding various research groups, it's highly unlikely that humanity will be given another "Aha!" moment a-la Fleming.

Next step is hopefully programmable nanobots. They use their tiny laser blasters to surgically kill $BAD_CELLS.

Lots of examples of public research online: http://www.sciencealert.com/new-light-activated-nanoparticle...

Imagine what's military-grade and secret right now. The future is bright!

> Imagine what's military-grade and secret right now.

I don't think this rule of thumb for technological advancement has held true since the Cold War. Whatever nanobots are military grade and secret are likely shitty prototypes that have cost billions over what was expected.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com