Tag Archives: antibiotic resistance
Winter is Coming: the end of antibiotics?
Ok, so this is nothing new. We’ve been hearing about returning to the “pre-antibiotic” era for years now. So when I first heard the news news out of China, about resistance to polymyxin antibiotics (a resistance found in both food animals treated with the stuff, and patients hospitalized with infections) I wondered why all the fuss over […]
ISO a new cure: time to hit the oldest books?
I’ve been writing about how technology informed by ecology can help save both food and medicine, leading us to better ways to fend of pest and pathogen. But today was a twofer for ancient remedies. One throwback garnered a Nobel for Medicine or Physiology for Youyou Tu who, after “investigating thousands” of chemicals in search […]
Life Changing Chemicals
Reposted from Whole Terrain with permission; and from Island Press Field Notes We are a chemically-addicted society. I am not talking caffeine, alcohol, or painkillers–although there is plenty of that–but chemicals designed to kill. Of the nearly 37 million pounds of antibiotics used in the United States each year, some 7 million pounds are ingested […]
Unnatural Interview with Salon.Com
Recently had the opportunity to chat with Lindsey Abrams of Salon.com about Unnatural Selection book. Here is an excerpt from that interview: Abrams: How much time passed between the time when humans began to have this outsized effect on other organisms, and when we began to really understand the implications of that, or even that […]
Unnatural Selection Reviewed in Publishers Weekly, National Nurse, LA Review of Books
Here are a few reviews of the new book, Unnatural Selection: Publishers Weekly: The power of evolution, toxicologist Monosson (Evolution in a Toxic World) demonstrates, is quite amazing: when strong selective pressure is coupled with short generation times, significant changes in populations can occur over very brief intervals…..more here National Nurse Magazine: This fascinating and thought-provoking book […]
An ounce of prevention is worth millions….
You take your yowling preschooler to the doctors. She is tugging on her ears. The doctor swipes the back of her throat to rule out strep. Check. But still there’s the ear thing. Is it bacterial? Viral? And if bacterial what kind? The doc takes her best guess and sends you off with a prescription […]
Antibiotic resistant bacteria caught in flagrante delicto in wastewater treatment plants
I’ve been writing about antibiotic resistance from the perspective of rapid evolution. That totally drug resistant bacteria exist is scary enough. Now we find that even in places like sewage treatment plants designed to destroy the buggers, they are happily breeding away. A report out of Rice University this week describes research revealing survival and […]
