MRSA Notes

This is a video about MDR-TB, which is Multi Drug Resistant Tuberculosis, and is absolutely frightening when you watch it and keep MRSA in mind. The video is filmed in Peru (and is narrated by Brad Pitt, which is how I came across it in the first place), where there were documented cases in the early 1990’s of this horrible strain of TB that had become resistant to every drug we had. This video accents the problems that I often talk about of the difficulties involved in creating antibiotics that are strong enough to kill these superbacteria but that won’t kill us. For a while, the World Health Organization (WHO) was just telling the Peruvian doctors to not even treat those with the MDR-TB, to just let them die. MRSA and MDR-TB are essentially the same diseases, with different bacteria involved, but the same essential problem. The bacteria have just become stronger than the antibiotics.

Watch the video on YouTube. And then educate everyone you know about the importance of not overusing antibiotics.

Also, while we are talking about superbugs and drug resistance in general, Hsien put me in touch with this book, by Kathiann M. Kowalski, Attack Of The Superbugs: The Crisis Of Drug-resistant Diseases (Issues in Focus Today) which covers the crisis of these diseases in a textbook format for teenagers. This issue is important for everyone to know about and to understand for now and for the future.

MDR TB, MRSA, multi drug resistance, Research and Development, Superbugs, tuberculosis

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