The end of antibiotics?

[The Conservative]

Or not....

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs ... ode=jprobs&

Discovery of Novel Antimicrobial Peptides from Varanus komodoensis (Komodo Dragon) by Large-Scale Analyses and De-Novo-Assisted Sequencing Using Electron-Transfer Dissociation Mass Spectrometry

[ssu]

History tells us that the world has a way to create deadly diseases that are highly resistant to a civilizations ability to treat those diseases with their current tools and methods.

Diseases need somehow to transmit by touch or by air, and that isn't going to change. Hence that there will be allways diseases that we cannot resist, that go to the pandemic level, is a bit off... Fighting a possible pandemic isn't just the case that you have to have an antidote.

Ebola was such a disease. It was worried in medical circles about a possible outbreak of the disease for decades now. As a small child (in the mid 80's) I asked my father (who is a professor of virology), what's the most deadly disease that could prove most deadly as an pandemic? His answer was then Ebola. Ebola had come to the radar only in 1976 (I think). And we had one epidemic in 2014-2016. Again, poor countries with poor or nonexistent health care system did poorly. Yet even the African states like Nigeria could contain it.

Ebola is your bubonic plague corollary: with 70% fatalities, it now killed 11 000 people out of some 28 000 cases. And you could see how it could be stopped: four cases in the US, 1 killed.

During the middle ages they simply didn't have a clue what was cause of the plague. Now we have live 24 hour news coverage if there is a possible victim of the disease found somewhere. First and foremost we have already seen just how prevention of deadly epidemics has happened. You simply can shut the borders. Stop people from entering from some country.

In 1919 the best science of the day could not treat the masses quick enough, and even if they had, they may have gotten it wrong.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/276060.php

It is likely we can run into a new disease that we are incapable of reacting quickly enough to stop. And with population densities in so many urban jungles and long geographic travel corridors the right disease could affect and kill before you could get to an overloaded hospital.

And how are we incapable of reacting quickly enough to stop it?

Let's not forget just when the last plague epidemic happened in the US. The year was 1924 and 1925. And still there are cases of it.



So basically if you think that a huge epidemic would happen and we would be incapable of doing anything to it as we can do no. Heck, then the Republicans ought to abolish the CDC and any government program there is to limit epidemics from happening. And the other countries should have the similar brainfart and go along. Then we could have the bubonic plague pandemic equivalent.

From these guys you can get the plague (yersinia pestis) in the US still today, at least in parts of the country:

[de officiis]

Drug companies don't fund a lot of research for antibiotics because they aren't a big revenue source.

[ssu]

Drug companies don't fund a lot of research for antibiotics because they aren't a big revenue source.

Even less funding is their for vaccines.

What is more profitable to the companies?

Having...

a) infected people eating medicine for the rest of their lives or providing other costly medical treatment.

b) a cheap vaccine shot once in your lifetime (usually at childhood) that takes care of goddam disease.

Once an antigen is found, it takes a decade or so before you have vaccinations given to people. So for a medical Company, making a vaccine is a long and risky endeavour.

[C-Mag]

And how are we incapable of reacting quickly enough to stop it?

Let's not forget just when the last plague epidemic happened in the US. The year was 1924 and 1925. And still there are cases of it.

Sure, I wouldn't argue against that. But it's foolhardy to think that you have diseases under control and there won't be another major pandemic with a high death rate. So, if you and your GOP friends want to get rid of the CDC, go ahead. I'll keep the CDC active because new diseases pop up and/or all the time.

[ssu]

Sure, I wouldn't argue against that. But it's foolhardy to think that you have diseases under control and there won't be another major pandemic with a high death rate. So, if you and your GOP friends want to get rid of the CDC, go ahead. I'll keep the CDC active because new diseases pop up and/or all the time.

The real danger is if the CSC and officials are too good and leaders in their utter stupidity then cut funding... because there hasn't been any pandemic! How do you reason costly expenditure for something that hasn't happened?

Actually we see this in some diseases that have been eradicated with vaccinations: if the disease has truly been stopped, at some time the vaccination program gets the ax, which is quite logical. No disease, no need for vaccination. Then when the disease pops ups again, there you have it. And if you have generations that are adults that haven't gotten the vaccination in their childhood, there you have the problem you refer to (hence they might not only be new diseases).

Some Ebola sure did have the capability of becoming a true pandemic ...if everything would have gone FUBAR. The ordinary Influenza's do go rapidly everywhere, because they aren't life threatening (even if people do die because of them).

Here is an informative video how the CDC defends your country against spread of diseases and in the end, pandemics. (Other countries do quite similar, btw) Worth looking at...

[Speaker to Animals]

Black Death probably was not the bubonic plague. More likely a virus.

[de officiis]

I wonder if human gene editing might be a long term answer to this problem.

[Dand]

Drug companies don't fund a lot of research for antibiotics because they aren't a big revenue source.

Even less funding is their for vaccines.

What is more profitable to the companies?

Having...

a) infected people eating medicine for the rest of their lives or providing other costly medical treatment.

b) a cheap vaccine shot once in your lifetime (usually at childhood) that takes care of goddam disease.

Once an antigen is found, it takes a decade or so before you have vaccinations given to people. So for a medical Company, making a vaccine is a long and risky endeavour.

I'm not convinced by your vaccine analysis.

Vaccines can be forced on nearly the entire population so the company is going to have a constant and predictable flow of "customers". Not everyone will catch a given disease but almost everyone can be coerced into receiving a vaccination. Vaccines also have legal advantages over treatment because in the US there is no legal recourse for the recipients, even if there is a complication. You cannot sue a vaccine manufacturer

Children today receive more vaccines than ever before. That is clear evidence that the drug companies are still making and selling vaccines and we're far from a crisis of "not enough vaccines".

[ssu]

I'm not convinced by your vaccine analysis.

Vaccines can be forced on nearly the entire population so the company is going to have a constant and predictable flow of "customers". Not everyone will catch a given disease but almost everyone can be coerced into receiving a vaccination. Vaccines also have legal advantages over treatment because in the US there is no legal recourse for the recipients, even if there is a complication. You cannot sue a vaccine manufacturer

Children today receive more vaccines than ever before. That is clear evidence that the drug companies are still making and selling vaccines and we're far from a crisis of "not enough vaccines".

Dand,

What do think is more cheaper: to vaccinate children polio or to treat people with polio?

In 1916 there were over 27,000 cases and more than 6,000 deaths due to polio in the United States, with over 2,000 deaths in New York City. The treatment before a vaccine? All things from hydrotherapy to an "Iron Lung" machines, which basically cost in the 1930's as much as a house. Any kind of treatment where you need doctors, nurses, hospitals etc. definately will be more expensive than a vaccination shot you get once in a lifetime. Hence if you can treat a disease with vaccinations, it's very likely that the vaccination program is cost effective. And naturally you don't get vaccinations to diseases that around in your country. So the idea that vaccinations are given to diseases that aren't a threat isn't realistic.



And then simply look where the drug companies make their profits. It's not in vaccinations, it's in drugs that basically elderly people use. Big Pharma doesn't put it's money to R&D, it put's it's money into advertizing. (And pocketing the Congress, the officials, the medical community... but what's new?)

In 2002, the average price of the fifty drugs most used by senior citizens was nearly $1,500 for a year's supply. - From 1960 to 1980, prescription drug sales were fairly static as a percent of US gross domestic product, but from 1980 to 2000, they tripled. They now stand at more than $200 billion a year. - Perhaps the most quoted source of statistics on the pharmaceutical industry, IMS Health, estimated total worldwide sales for prescription drugs to be about $400 billion in 2002. About half were in the United States. So the $200 billion colossus is really a $400 billion megacolossus.

See here

Now a vaccination "program" that is given to a child in 2003 (roughly the same time as above) was 400 to 740 dollars for his lifetime. So in a way the immunization program of a person costs perhaps what a senior citizen spends in medication in a year. That tells clearly what is the more lucrative market.