Bacteria are getting better at eluding technological medicine's open attacks. I've been following the mainstream media's reports on this subject for a while now, and especially in this last year things seem to have begun an exponential rise.Of chief concern is a variety of Staph bacteria, known as MRSA, that is highly resistant to powerful antibiotics, as well as being way more virulent. And now some numbers are in: MRSA has killed an estimated 19,000 Americans in 2005 and made 94,000 seriously ill.
Additionally, a strain of bacteria sometimes involved in middle ear infections (Streptococcus pneumoniae) is evolving antibiotic resistance that may have come as a response to increased vaccination rates and the overuse of drugs for ear infections.
Folks around the country are getting worried as these bugs spread from the hospital to the community. Dallas, where a teenager died from MRSA in March, is monitoring local schools. Bedford, VA has shut down all its schools after a student died of MRSA today.
This is getting scarier, and it seems to me that a moratorium on antibiotic use (unthinkable to mention even 10 years ago) for all but the most dire emergencies is almost in order. But if we can't use antibiotics, what on earth can we use to treat ear, skin, and lung infections? We are powerless!
