noteworthy wrote:
Jerome Groopman:

“There are now a growing number of reports of cases of infections caused by gram-negative organisms for which no adequate therapeutic options exist,” Giske and his colleagues wrote. “This return to the preantibiotic era has become a reality in many parts of the world.”

A recent assessment of progress in the field, from UCLA, concluded, “FDA approval of new antibacterial agents decreased by 56 per cent over the past 20 years (1998-2002 vs. 1983-1987),” noting that, in the researchers’ projection of future development only six of the five hundred and six drugs currently being developed were new antibacterial agents. Drug companies are looking for blockbuster therapies that must be taken daily for decades, drugs like Lipitor, for high cholesterol, or Zyprexa, for psychiatric disorders, used by millions of people and generating many billions of dollars each year. Antibiotics are used to treat infections, and are therefore prescribed only for days or weeks. (The exception is the use of antibiotics in livestock, which is both a profit-driver and a potential cause of antibiotic resistance.)

From the archive:

What, at bottom, is a toilet?

Eating meat, something I have always enjoyed doing, has become problematic in recent years. Though beef consumption spiked upward during the flush 90's, the longer-term trend is down, and many people will tell you they no longer eat the stuff. Inevitably they'll bring up mad-cow disease (and the accompanying revelation that industrial agriculture has transformed these ruminants into carnivores -- indeed, into cannibals). They might mention their concerns about E. coli contamination or antibiotics in the feed.

The urbanization of the world's livestock is a fairly recent historical development, so it makes a certain sense that cow towns like Poky Feeders would recall human cities several centuries ago. As in 14th-century London, the metropolitan digestion remains vividly on display: the foodstuffs coming in, the waste streaming out. Similarly, there is the crowding together of recent arrivals from who knows where, combined with a lack of modern sanitation. This combination has always been a recipe for disease; the only reason contemporary animal cities aren't as plague-ridden as their medieval counterparts is a single historical anomaly: the modern antibiotic.

Forgetting, or willed ignorance, is the preferred strategy of many beef eaters, a strategy abetted by the industry.

In a... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Jello wrote:

I enjoy these narratives. I'm just curious about what your intention is when you start one: do you have a beginning and an end a core meme you track passing through these links and you are trying to make a point that summarizes what you gathered from them all, or are you just free associating link to link that you find interesting for the day, and what pattern emerges is left to the reader?

First, let me say that I appreciate the comment, because these 'narratives' generally provoke so little reaction that I have assumed they go unread. (I write them because I enjoy making them, so the silence with which they are typically received doesn't really bother me. They are rarely recommended by others -- the longest ones, almost never. One might consider them the very antithesis of Diggy posts.)

I am reluctant to try to explain them, or to articulate, ex-post-facto, a characterization of 'method' which does not really exist in practice. The technique, such as it is, is definitely associative, though I would not call it free. As I work my way through a piece like Superbugs here, I am inclined to recall other things I have read recently, or not so recently, and I like to cite them as I can, both for the sake of sharing, and to improve their findability down the road/stream. Sometimes there is an overarching theme or three, perhaps as minuscule as a single word that struck me as evocative or memorable. Clearly, patterns exist, though the relationships often do not become entirely clear to me for another day or so.