Bacteria race ahead of stupid Yalie Lyme criminals and losers.
Peenies, Peenies, Peenies, My Name is Chuck and I love McSweenies'
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Subject: [SpinLyme] Bacteria race ahead of drugs
Date: Jan 20, 2008 3:00 PM
The intracellular fungi (mycoplasma in red and white blood cells),
also contribute
to uncontrollable infections. These are the real epidemic, due to
global warming.
Immune suppressed people, obvious don't have their natural repertoire
of defenses
against all sorts of infection.
So, for all this www.aldf.com bioweapons nonsense and shenanigans...
You can look all this up.
It's all published in MedLine.
Infections with mycoplasma change the RBC surface potential,
contributing to fatigue.
The rosetting seen in Lyme patients blood (Bowen) was a characteristic
of mycoplasmally
infected blood before people saw it as a Lyme symptom.
All of this is out of hand because of all the relentlessly stupid lies
over Lyme
disease. Imagine if this was still 1989 and we were allowed to simply
follow where
research took us?
But, no.
Kaiser and the Yalie Profiteers had to ru(i)n things.
Normally we expect "law enforcement" to stop crime. The absurdity of
it all is demonstrated by the Connecticut Attorney General pursuing
the Lyme crimes,
rather than some national doctors' group, first. We know for sure
they all
feel foolish, but I have not seen any kind of formal apology from the
AMA.
http://www.cababstractsplus.org/veterinarymedicine/articles.asp?ArticleID=17096&action=display&openMenu=relatedItems&SubjectID=111
"Many infectious diseases can infect both humans and animals," said
AMA
board member, Duane M. Cady, MD, in a statement. "New infections
continue to
emerge and with threats of cross-species disease transmission and
pandemics in our
global health environment, the time has come for the human and
veterinary medical
professions to work closer together for the greater protection of the
public health
in the 21st century."
"For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention selected
a veterinarian,
Dr. Lonnie J. King, to head up the agency's National Center for
Zoonotic, Vector-Borne,
and Enteric Diseases. A relatively recent creation, the center is
dedicated to understanding
infectious disease ecology."
- - -
That means the CDC formally replaced the Lyme crooks with a real
scientist at CDC
Ft. Collins, but this is not an apology and it's not a retraction of
the current
bogus Lyme testing schema or anyone's bogus "guidelines."
The NYMC/Yale Lyme crooks are standing their ground against Blumenthal
because what
else are they gonna do? Call the FBI and say, "Please come over and
arrest
us. We murdered and maimed thousands of people with our bogus
definition of 'Lyme
disease' and we lied about ImmuLyme and LYMErix."
Liars are cowards.
Kathleen
-----Original Message-----
>From:
>Sent: Jan 20, 2008 2:07 PM
>To: Spin...@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [SpinLyme] Bacteria race ahead of drugs
>
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/20/MN1234A1.DTL
>
>Bacteria race ahead of drugs
>Falling behind: Deadly infections increasingly able to beat antibiotics
>Sabin Russell
>
>Sunday, January 20, 2008
>
>Drug-Resistant Staph
>Bacteria race ahead of drugs (1/20)
>
>Man grateful to be alive after staph infection (1/20)
>
>Family still battling drug-resistant staph (1/20)
>
>S.F. General follows drug-resistant bacteria (1/15)
>
>S.F. gay community an epicenter for new strain of staph (1/14)
>
>Podcast: Problem of drug-resistant diseases
>
>At a busy microbiology lab in San Francisco, bad bugs are brewing inside vials
of human blood, or sprouting inside petri dishes, all in preparation
for a battery
of tests.
>
>These tests will tell doctors at UCSF Medical Center which kinds of bacteria
are infecting their patients, and which antibiotics have the best
chance to knock
those infections down.
>
>[Podcast: Growing problem of drug-resistant diseases and what you can do about
it.]
>
>With disturbing regularity, the list of available options is short, and it is
getting shorter.
>
>Dr. Jeff Brooks has been director of the UCSF lab for 29 years, and has watched
with a mixture of fascination and dread how bacteria once tamed by
antibiotics evolve
rapidly into forms that practically no drug can treat.
>
>"These organisms are very small," he said, "but they are still
smarter than we are."
>
>Among the most alarming of these is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus, a bug that used to be confined to vulnerable hospital
patients, but now
is infecting otherwise healthy people in schools, gymnasiums and the
home.
>
>As MRSA continues its natural evolution, even more drug-resistant strains are
emerging. The most aggressive of these is one called USA300.
>
>Last week, doctors at San Francisco General Hospital reported that a variant
of that strain, resistant to six important antibiotics normally used
to treat staph,
may be transmitted by sexual contact and is spreading among gay men in
San Francisco,
Boston, New York and Los Angeles.
>
>Yet the problem goes far beyond one bug and a handful of drugs. Entire classes
of mainstay antibiotics are being threatened with obsolescence, and
bugs far more
dangerous than staph are evolving in ominous ways.
>
>"We are on the verge of losing control of the situation, particularly in
the hospitals," said Dr. Chip Chambers, chief of infectious disease at
San
Francisco General Hospital.
>
>The reasons for increasing drug resistance are well known:
>
>
>- Overuse of antibiotics, which speeds the natural evolution of bacteria, promoting
new mutant strains resistant to those drugs.
>
>
>- Careless prescribing of antibiotics that aren't effective for the malady
in question, such as a viral infection.
>
>- Patient demand for antibiotics when they aren't needed.
>
>
>Heavy use of antibiotics in poultry and livestock feed, which can breed resistance
to similar drugs for people.
>
>Germ strains that interbreed at hospitals, where infection controls as simple
as hand-washing are lax.
>
>
>All this is happening while the supply of new antibiotics from drug company
laboratories is running dry.
>
>Since commercial production of penicillin began in the 1940s, antibiotics have
been the miracle drugs of modern medicine, suppressing infectious
diseases that
have afflicted human beings for thousands of years. But today, as a
generation of
Baby Boomers begins to enter a phase of life marked by the ailments of
aging, we
are running out of miracles.
>
>Top infectious disease doctors are saying that lawmakers and the public at large
do not realize the grave implications of this trend.
>
>"Within just a few years, we could be seeing that most of our microorganisms
are resistant to most of our antibiotics," said Dr. Jack Edwards,
chief of
infectious diseases at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
>
>At Brooks' microbiology laboratory, the evolutionary struggle of bacteria
versus antibiotics is on display every day. He grabbed a clear plastic
dish that
grew golden-hued MRSA germs taken from a patient a few days earlier.
Inside were
seven paper dots, each impregnated with a different drug. If the
antibiotic worked,
the dot had a clear ring around it - a zone where no germs could grow.
No ring meant
the drug had failed. This test was typical. Three drugs worked, four
had failed.
>
>The strategy for nearly 70 years has been to stay a step ahead of resistance
by developing new antibiotics. In the past decade, however, major
drugmakers have
been dropping out of the field. The number of new antibiotics in
development has
plummeted. During the five-year period ended in 1987, the FDA licensed
16 novel
antibiotics. In the most recent five-year period, only five were
approved.
>
>For drugmakers, the economics are simple: An antibiotic can cure an infection
in a matter of days. There is much more money in finding drugs that
must be taken
for a lifetime.
>
>
>Toll of antibiotic resistance
>With antibiotic research lagging, the bugs are catching up, and infections are
taking a terrible toll. The federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention estimates
that each year 99,000 Americans die of various bacterial infections
that they pick
up while hospitalized - more than double the number killed every year
in automobile
accidents.
>
>Of the 1.7 million hospital-acquired infections that occur each year, studies
show, 70 percent are resistant to at least one antibiotic.
>
>Drug-resistant staph is rapidly becoming a major public health menace. Last
fall, the CDC estimated that MRSA alone has killed 19,000 Americans.
Most of these
patients picked up the bug in the hospital, but it is now spreading in
urban and
suburban neighborhoods across the nation.
>
>"MRSA is killing people. It almost killed me," said Peg McQueary,
whose life was upended when she nicked her leg with a razor three
years ago.
>
>Within days, her leg was grotesquely swollen, red from foot to knee. Her husband
wheeled her into a Kaiser medical office, where her doctor took one
look and rushed
her to an isolation room.
>
>She was placed on intravenous vancomycin, a drug reserved for the most serious
cases of MRSA. Since that frightening week, the 42-year-old Roseville
woman has
spent much of her life in and out of hospitals, and she's learned just
how difficult
these infections can be to treat. McQueary has burned through drug
after drug, but
the staph keeps coming back.
>
>She's been hooked up at her home to bags of vancomycin and swallowed doses
of linezolid, clindamycin and a half a dozen other antibiotics with
barely pronounceable
names and limited effect.
>
>One of the newest antibiotics, intravenous daptomycin - approved by the Food
and Drug Administration in 2003 - seems to work the best, but it has
not prevented
recurrences.
>
>"It's just a struggle to do everyday things," she said. "I
am ready to scream about it."
>
>Today, she moderates a Web site, MRSA Resources Support Forum, swapping stories
with other sufferers. "Giving them a place to vent is some sort of
healing
for me," she said.
>
>McQueary's travails are becoming an all-too-familiar American experience.
As bacteria evolve new ways to sidestep antibiotics, doctors treating
infections
find themselves with a dwindling list of options. Old-line drugs are
losing their
punch, while the newer ones are both costly and laden with side
effects.
>
>
>Drugs' weakening grip
>Dr. Joseph Guglielmo, chairman of the Department of Clinical Pharmacy at UCSF,
closely tracks the effectiveness of dozens of antibiotics against
different infectious
bacteria. Laminated color-coded cards called antibiograms are printed
up for hospital
physicians each year. They chart the success rate of each antibiotic
against at
least 12 major pathogens. These charts show how antibiotics, like
tires slowly leaking
air, are losing strength year by year.
>
>As head of the hospital pharmacy, Guglielmo oversees a small warehouse at the
medical center that stores millions of dollars worth of prescription
drugs that
are used every day to treat patients there. Strolling down the aisles
that houses
bins of antibiotics, he reached for a bottle of imipenem, and cradled
the little
vial in the palm of his hand.
>
>"This one is the last line of defense," he said.
>
>Imipenem was approved by the FDA in 1985. A powerful member of the carbapenem
family - the latest in a long line of penicillin-like drugs - it is
frequently used
in hospitals today because it can still defeat a wide variety of germs
that have
outwitted the earlier-generation antibiotics.
>
>But at a cost of about $60 a day, and with a safety profile that includes risk
of seizure, it is a "Big Gun" drug that must be used carefully. As
soon
as doctors discover that a lesser antibiotic will work, they will stop
prescribing
imipenem, like soldiers conserving their last remaining stores of
ammunition.
>
>Now, there are signs of trouble.
>
>Imipenem has been the antibiotic of choice for doctors treating Klebsiella,
a vigorous microbe that causes pneumonia in hospitalized patients. But
in June 2005,
New York City doctors reported in the journal Archives of Internal
Medicine outbreaks
of imipenem-resistant Klebsiella. Fifty-nine such cases were logged at
just two
hospitals. The death rate among those whose infections entered their
bloodstreams
was 47 percent.
>
>Last year, Israeli doctors battled an outbreak of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella
that has killed more than 400 patients.
>
>
>Cipro's dramatic decline
>The antibiotic Cipro, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1987,
is familiar to millions of Americans because it is widely prescribed
for pneumonia,
urinary tract infections and sexually transmitted diseases. It was the
drug used
to treat victims of the anthrax mailings that followed the Sept. 11
attacks.
>
>Unlike most antibiotics, which originated from natural toxins produced by bacteria,
Cipro came from tinkering with a chemical compound used to fight
malaria. The German
drug giant Bayer patented Cipro's active ingredient in 1983, and it
subsequently
became the most widely sold antibiotic in the world.
>
>At hospitals across the country, however, clinicians have witnessed a remarkable
drop-off in the utility of Cipro against more commonly encountered
germs.
>
>Antibiograms from the UCSF lab highlight the alarming erosion: As recently as
1999, Cipro was effective against 95 percent of specimens of E. coli -
bacteria
responsible for the most common hospital-acquired infections in the
United States.
By 2006, Cipro would work against only 60 percent of samples tested.
>
>The bacterial evolution that has so quickly sapped Cipro has also reduced the
effectiveness of the entire family of related antibiotics called
fluoroquinolones
- drugs such as Levaquin, Floxin, and Noroxin. "If there is ever a
group of
drugs that has taken a beating, it is these," said UCSF pharmacy chief
Guglielmo.
>
>Against Acinetobacter - a bug responsible for rising numbers of bloodstream
and lung infections in intensive care units, as well as among combat
casualties
in Iraq - Cipro's effectiveness fell from 80 percent in 1999 to 10
percent just
four years later. Cipro has also lost ground against Pseudomonas
aeruginosa, a common
cause of pneumonia in hospitalized patients. Nearly 80 percent of the
bugs tested
were susceptible to Cipro in 1999. That fell to 65 percent by 2004.
>
>At UCSF, doctors carefully monitor the trends in drug resistance and modify
their prescribing patterns accordingly. As a result, they have been
able to nudge
some of these resistance levels down. Cipro's effectiveness against
Acinetobacter
crept up to 40 percent last year, for example, but the overall trend
remains alarming.
>
>Although MRSA infections have been capturing headlines, bugs such as Acinetobacter,
Klebsiella and Pseudomonas are keeping doctors awake at night. They
come from a
class of pathogens called Gram-negative bacteria, which typically have
an extra
layer of microbial skin to ward off antibiotics, and internal pumps
that literally
drive out antibiotics that penetrate.
>
>Gram-negative infections have always been difficult to treat, and few new drugs
are in development. Some researchers believe that the pipeline for new
antibiotics
is drying up because it is simply getting more difficult to outwit the
bugs. "It
may be that we've already found all the good antibiotics," warned
Chambers,
San Francisco General Hospital's infectious disease chief. "If that
is
so, then we've really got to be careful how we use the ones we have."
>
>
>Bacteria's natural evolution
>Terry Hazen, senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and director
of its ecology program, is not at all surprised by the tenacity of our
bacterial
foes. "We are talking about 3.5 billion years of evolution," he said.
"They are the dominant life on Earth."
>
>Bacteria have invaded virtually every ecological niche on the planet. Human
explorers of extreme environments such as deep wells and mines are
still finding
new bacterial species. "As you go deeper into the subsurface,
thousands and
thousands of feet, you find bacteria that have been isolated for
millions of years
- and you find multiple antibiotic resistance," Hazen said.
>
>In his view, when bacteria develop resistance to modern antibiotics, they are
merely rolling out old tricks they mastered eons ago in their struggle
to live in
harsh environments in competition with similarly resilient species.
>
>Drug industry economics are also a factor. "It takes a hell of a lot of
effort to find the next really good drug," said Steven Projan, vice
president
of New Jersey pharmaceutical giant Wyeth Inc.
>
>The costs of bringing a new drug to market are hotly debated. A Tufts University
study estimated $802 million; the consumer group Public Citizen pegs
it at $110
million. Either way, the investment is huge.
>
>By 1990, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America, half the major
drugmakers in Japan and the United States had cut back or halted
antibiotic research.
Since 2000, some of the biggest names in pharmaceutical development -
Roche, Bristol-Myers
Squibb, Abbott Laboratories, Eli Lilly, Aventis and Procter & Gamble -
had joined
the exodus.
>
>By common measures used to gauge the profit potential of new drugs, antibiotics
fall way behind, Projan explained. For every $100 million that a new
antibiotic
might yield, after projected revenue and expenses are tallied, a new
cancer drug
will generate $300 million. A new drug for arthritis, by this same
analysis, brings
in $1.1 billion. Investors have been placing their bets accordingly.
>
>In 2002, Wyeth had sharply curtailed its own antibiotic drug discovery programs.
"We tried to get out of the field, but one of the reasons we did not
get out
altogether is we feel we have a public responsibility to fund more
research,"
said Projan.
>
>Wyeth's decision to keep some antibiotic research alive eventually paid
off. In June 2005, the FDA licensed Tygacil, an intravenous antibiotic
for complicated
skin diseases such as drug-resistant staph infection. Only one new
antibiotic for
oral or intravenous use has won FDA approval since.
>
>Pointing a finger at doctors
>The waning of antibiotics in the arsenal of modern medicine has been going on
for so long that some doctors fear a kind of complacency has set in.
Increasingly,
the medical profession is pointing a finger at itself.
>
>"We have behaved very badly," said Dr. Louis Rice, a Harvard-educated,
Columbia-trained specialist in infectious diseases. "We have made a
lot of
stupid choices."
>
>His words brought a nervous silence to thousands of his colleagues, as he delivered
a keynote speech in 2006 for the American Society for Microbiology's
annual
conference in San Francisco.
>
>Rice, a professor at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, said doctors
and drug companies alike are responsible for breeding resistance by
"the indiscriminate
dumping of antibiotics into our human patients."
>
>Drug-resistant germs contaminate the bedrails, the catheter lines, the blood
pressure cuffs and even the unwashed hands of doctors, nurses and
orderlies. The
germs keep evolving, swapping drug-resistance traits with other
microbes. He likened
American intensive-care units - the high-tech enclaves where the most
seriously
ill patients are treated - to "toxic waste dumps."
>
>Drug companies, he said, have a responsibility to refill the nation's depleted
medicine chest. He suggested that a tax - similar to a Superfund tax
placed on polluters
to clean up toxic waste sites - be imposed on companies that have
dropped antibiotic
research. It would support drugmakers that are still in the game.
"Your products
that you've made billions and billions and billions and billions of
dollars
on have created this problem, and you can't just walk away," he said.
>
>Rice has stressed that the existing arsenal of antibiotics should be used wisely,
and that often means sparingly. During a half century of antibiotic
use, he said,
there is scant research on how short a course of drugs is actually
needed to cure
a patient. Instead, doctors routinely prescribe a week to 10-day
course of drugs
recommended by manufacturers. If patients are taking antibiotics after
their infections
are truly gone, they are creating conditions that breed resistance.
Indeed, a Dutch
study showed that one kind of pneumonia can be treated just as
successfully with
three days of amoxicillin as with the traditional eight.
>
>Since drug companies cannot be expected to spend money on research that could
trim sales of their products, federally funded agencies such as the
National Institutes
of Health should do the job, Rice said in a recent interview.
>
>He also took his own specialty to task for failing to protect the most important
weapons its arsenal. Infectious disease experts at hospitals must find
the "backbone"
to stop other doctors from prescribing antibiotics unnecessarily, Rice
said. He
argued they should assert their authority to control antibiotic usage,
just as cancer
specialists have a say in which chemotherapy drugs are prescribed by
surgeons.
>
>And all health care professionals, he added, "have to wash their damn hands."
>
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>How to get involved
>What: The STARR Act, a bill sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Sen.
Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, was introduced last fall to address the problem
of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria and to spur development of new drugs.
>
>To learn more: Go to links.sfgate.com/ZCEF.
>
>Want to tell your representatives in the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives
how you stand on the STARR Act?
>
>Call Sen. Barbara Boxer at her Washington office at (202) 224-3553 or her San
Francisco office at (415) 403-0100, or e-mail her by going to
links.sfgate.com/ZCEK.
>
>Call Sen. Dianne Feinstein at her Washington office at (202) 224-3841 or her
San Francisco office at (415) 393-0707, or find her e-mail address at
links.sfgate.com/ZCEL.
>
>Contact information for your House representative can be found at links.sfgate.com/ZCEJ.
>
>
>
>Online resources
>A support resource created by MRSA patients is at:
>
>links.sfgate.com/ZCEE
>
>For more information:
>
>links.sfgate.com/ZCBT
>
>links.sfgate.com/ZCBQ
>
>This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
>
>
>[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>