UK team in bacteria breakthrough

[TechBear_Seattle]

Source: The British Broadcasting Corporation

Scientists have new hopes of restoring penicillin's full antibiotic effect after discovering how a bacterium which causes pneumonia has become resistant.

The work by UK scientists could also lead to the creation of new designer drugs to tackle diseases such as MRSA.

The University of Warwick team focused on Streptococcus pneumoniae, which kills 5m children a year worldwide.

In recent years, it has been one of a growing number of bacteria which have become resistant to penicillin.



Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7287453.stm

[Vilis Veritas]

1. Extremely good news. I wish them great success. nt

[trotsky]

2. Evolution has a nearly 4 billion year head start on us.

It's remarkable we've figured out the things we have, and this is encouraging news.

[NewJeffCT]

3. great news

remember when these breakthroughs were always made by American scientists & researchers?

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. Yup, and I'm not all that old, either

My, how a few decades can change things.

[lazyriver]

5. I was thinking the same thing. We used to be among the

leaders if not THE leader in R&D breakthroughs until the *Bush* Administration's War on Science, one of its few successful wars. (The others being The War on Freedom and the combined Wars on the Poor and Middle Class).

The UK scientists' work is exciting and probably will lead to great benefits for humankind. We should be promoting such noble work here with the same gusto as we promote war, oil exploration and huge corporate profits.

[NewJeffCT]

6. well, after the stem-cell fiasco

a lot of scientists left the country after Bush blocked new research into stem cells. It didn't get a lot of publicity, though.

[lonestarnot]

8. yeah!

:applause:

[Spinzonner]

7. Whch will, in turn, lead to the evolution

of bacteria that can defeat the new tactics and drugs

Can we really win this race or are we breeding organisms that evolve so fast as to be incapable of being combated technologically.

[loudsue]

9. If only we could get a designer drug that cures republicanism,

and one for racism, and one for sexism, and one for greed, and one for any other similar forms of stupidity.

[YankeyMCC]

10. I'll wager all these researchers understand and accept

the basics tenets of evolution. This is encouraging and happy news it's a difficult problem and as trotsky earlier in the thread noted we have to deal with billions of years of evolution, and of course we can only achieve what we have by understanding it as best we can.

I'm saying all this because this story made me think of the story of the guy that sued over getting fired from his research job at Woods Hole because he felt he was discriminated against for not accepting the theory of evolution.

[roguevalley]

11. we have a friend's son in the hospital in Seattle fighting the

flesh-eating virus. its dire for him. its too bad it probably won't be available for a while.

[arikara]

12. That's rough...

I hope he'll be ok. I wouldn't be surprised if he picked it up in the hospital. If he is able to swallow them and the parents are open to it, suggest that they give him turmeric capsules, or at least sprinkle it on his food. It won't hurt and it may help to get him over the hump.

My Mr who's in and out of the hospital wound up with the superbug infection a couple of years ago. It took them 4 rounds of antibiotics to finally get it right. I found out about turmeric after the fact and now give him a couple caps a day and increase it to 4 or more if he's going back in. He's had several surgeries, ER visits and admissions since and not had any more problems with infection although its horribly rampant in the hospital. Its expensive to buy the caps because we use so much so I just buy the organic powder and make our own capsules. Anecdotal I know but I swear by it and so do lots of other people.

Just google turmeric mrsa infection for info.