Several years ago I wrote a couple of articles about antibiotics. At the time, they were being sold freely over the counter and doctors in many countries in Europe were prescribing them for all types of complaints they were not necessarily going to help.
Back then, I had just read a book called Superbug – Nature’s Revenge by Geoffrey Cannon. One review about the book rings true now: “We are faced with a return to a medical dark age in which antibiotics no longer work against a vast range of infections, some created by antibiotics, some perhaps epidemic and deadly. It is good that in Superbug, Geoffrey Cannon has now presented these issues in simple terms, in the hope that we can at last understand and act” – Graham Dukes, former head of Pharmaceuticals Programme, World Health Organisation (Europe).
I am sure readers are aware of the outbreak of the deadly mutant E. coli that has occurred in Germany, which has infected about 1,733 people, with 18 deaths. Those who have travelled there and returned to other areas in the world have included 11 infected in the UK, 17 in Denmark, 43 in Sweden with one death, six in France, eight in the Netherlands and many more. These figures could have increased by the time this article is published.
The bacterium responsible is a completely new strain and is able to pump poison into the bloodstream, causing seizures and kidney failure and leaving victims needing dialysis. This virulent mutation is also resistant to most antibiotics, and health officials have warned that the medication could even make it more aggressive.
Reinhardt Brunkhorst, a kidney specialist in Hamburg, said “the number of new infections appears to be stabilising somewhat. But we are dealing here in fact with the biggest epidemic caused by bacteria in recent decades.”
Sadly, this situation was predicted by Cannon, and others, who opposed the prolific use of antibiotics. Coincidentally, recent test results from a laboratory in a London hospital signalled the end of the war between antibiotics and the bugs they were supposed to kill, which had been raging for over 60 years.
There is no doubt that this group of drugs was probably the most successful ever developed in modern medicine. However, they were only ever going to be available for a moment in time.
Alexander Fleming, who discovered Penicillin by accident in 1928, predicted this day would come. He knew there was an evolutionary process, billions of years old, that would overtake what modern medicine saw as the answer to many health problems.
At around the same time as Fleming made his discovery, a scientist in Russia had also made an accidental discovery which showed similar promise. George Eliava discovered that certain viruses could kill bacteria.
He found that each deadly bug has its unique viral nemesis. The virus closes in on the bug alone and destroys it. These viruses were called ‘bacteriophages’, which literally means ‘bacteria killers’.
They form the basis of something called phage therapy. Unfortunately, this therapy was overlooked and neglected as antibiotics took hold and became the medication of choice. More about phage therapy later.
The dream of antibiotics was that they were miracle cures; they saved countless lives and worked against epidemic diseases which were once the scourge of humanity. The nightmare was that they are toxic chemicals; they can breed superbugs causing new plagues of infection that could threaten our health.
As the use of antibiotics increased, we arrived at the situation where, even if we weren’t taking them, we were absorbing them through the environment and the food we eat.
Researchers have discovered that nearly half of the meat and poultry sold in stores is contaminated with antibiotic-resistant staph infections. This is the result of intensive farming practices. Farmers treated (and may still do) their stock with a form of antibiotics to keep them healthy.
The Lancet in 1996 reported that researchers discovered that mincemeat sold in German shops was contaminated with vancomycin-resistant enterococci. Other teams in the US found samples of meat contaminated with a different bacteria (Clin. Infect. Dis., 2011). Generally these contaminations would be killed during the cooking process; however, they could be left on kitchen surfaces during preparation.
Another research team found traces of pharmaceutical drugs including antibiotics in waterways around the world. They believe these to be the result of the manufacturers of pharmaceuticals washing the waste from industrial plants into the waterways and patients flushing unused drugs down the toilet (Environ. Health Perspect., 2009).
Poultry is another foodstuff which has been highly affected by ingesting antibiotics. The aim was to boost the immune system; however, American scientists have been testing a dietary yeast extract which appears to be just as good as antibiotics, giving the same result with a safer outcome for those eating poultry (Poult. Sci., 2010).
Next week we will look in more detail at phage therapy and how this may be the salvation of the devastation left by antibiotics.
kathryn@maltanet.net