Dealing with bacterial crises - a "slightly sunnier view"
Annelle of the Big Think says:
Here's a followup to your August 6 post "The new generation of resistant infections is almost impossible to treat" that mentions Dr. Bonnie Bassler.While the post was fairly pessimistic, in our recent interview with Dr. Bassler she offers a slightly sunnier view. Namely, that outbreaks of bacteria, (for example, the recent salmonella tomato scare, last year's spinach crisis,) are not the result of pathogens necessarily becoming stronger: the salmonella was still regular salmonella. The problem lies in the set up of our food system, in which any contamination is immediately spread over a wide area, making it difficult to control or even track it. (I think the answer is for everyone to become a locavore.)
Dr. Bonnie Bassler, "Dealing with Bacterial Crises."
The link to the full interview is here, wherein Dr. Bassler discusses the issue of women in science, her discovery of quorum sensing, and what she hopes to accomplish in the future.
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The increase in outbreaks due to food contamination directly correlates with the dramatic decrease in government regulation of our food supply since the Reagan administration. This trend has accelerated during the Bush adminstration. Food safety regulation is an executive branch function that has been decimated by political appointments, critical oversight positions kept deliberately vacant, and raping of regulatory budgets by reallocating them within the Executive, thus bypassing Congressional pursestrings.
I know this is anathema to the libertarian spirit of the Intertubes, but check it out for yourself. We are being poisoned as a direct result of free market fundamentalism run amok.
How many things have spelled the end of mankind in the past 10 years, though?
SARS
Monkey Pox
Skin Wasting Disease
Bird Flu
Asian Flu
I can't remember them all. Let's scare Americans to death!
I'll become a locavore the second I get someone to explain how to grow vegetables in Canada in January.
It's astounding the lack of thought alot people put into the origins of their food. The hundreds-of-animals mince people eat daily is a great example.
If there is any positives to come from upcoming food shortages, and the drought is that people are becoming more conscious about their food supply.
Now - if we could all stop chomping gratuitously on anti-biotics, that'd also help.
#3 PAULDRYE: Greenhouses and / or clever hydroponic setups. But that's alot of effort.
Another advantage of getting involved in your own food production is that it's a great way to inoculate yourself with a wide variety of microorganisms. After you shovel chicken and cow manure for a while, a little E. coli on your lettuce won't be such a big deal!
Dr. Bressler's background is very interesting; she's a real achiever. I agree that contaimination is promoted by how foodstuffs are handled. And now they are handled more often than ever before. At the same time, I believe that the companies and individuals handling food take shortcuts in the interest of saving money and out of apathy (just like those responsible for building cars and keeping elevators safe, among other things). Education and compliance checks are needed, if corporations and indviduals aren't going to do what has to be done.
--Mike
Consciousness is just an evolutionary byproduct of the astoundingly successful bacterial colonies that use our bodies as hosts, so I just treat virulent pathogenic outbreaks like holiday visits from unpleasant relatives that make me vomit until I die.
#3 PAULDRYE: Greenhouses and / or clever hydroponic setups. But that's alot of effort.
Oh, horse pancakes...the surface area of farms in Canada is somewhere in the region of 600,000 square kilometers. It also gets to -40 below pretty much everywhere at least one day a year. The carbon emissions for counteracting that, even after stopping growing food for export, would be immense.
>Greenhouses and / or clever hydroponic setups. But that's alot of effort.
Yup, it would suck the same way it sucked to install modern plumbing in so many urban areas of the world to get sewage out of the gutter. But it was a good thing, yes? Good Things don't always come in convenient packages.
#PAULDRYE:
I believe the traditional response to not being able to grow vegetables in the winter was to subsist on food that had been canned or otherwise preserved during the times of greater food availability. By the time fresh food became available again, it was a real treat.
And since we have vitamins now, we'd probably end up with fewer cases of scurvy.
But no one wants to give up year-round fresh food anymore.
You can also can stuff that's grown in the summer. And potatoes and apples etc. keep through the winter if they're chilled (like in a root cellar or an unheated shed).
How do you think people made it through the Canadian winters before we started importing salad greens from California? They planned ahead and changed their diet accordingly.
How do you think people made it through the Canadian winters before we started importing salad greens from California?
The majority of those people made it through the winter by not existing at all -- there are 33 million of us now, not under 10 million. Suggesting that Canadians go back to older foods and food prep methods, even with modern improvements, implies a hecatomb of the Canadian population.
uhh, except in poorer parts where they just lost all their teeth.
Considering the massive leaps in hydroponic and grow light technology that Canada has recently seen emerge in *cough* other agricultural sectors, I think a few locally grown heirloom tomatoes in January shouldn't be too much to ask.
Now you too can grow exotic plants in the comfort and safety of your own basement, closet or attic.
Considering the massive leaps in hydroponic and grow light technology that Canada has recently seen emerge in *cough* other agricultural sectors
Hmmm...I suppose large-scale conversion of the current, um, export industry here could make a dent in things.
On the other hand, that leaves only BC in good shape.
(And more seriously, there's still the issue of where all the energy is to come from to run these grow lights. I'm having a hard time believing that the environmental cost of using gasoline to ship veggies from California or the Old South is not substantially less than the number of new power plants we'd need.)
Given that the New Yorker article talked about the rise of antibiotic resistant stains of bacteria, which have arisen mostly in hospitals, getting more numerous, & spreading out into the population by leaping to other appropriate hosts, (prisons, football team locker rooms, etc). I don't see why the post of the video of Doctor Bassler even compares the article to the video, other than Dr Bassler being in one & quoted extensively in the other. One discusses the idea that we are being exposed to pathogens we wouldn't ordinarily encounter due to changes in the food chain/web/net/whatever, the other takes a rather justified pessimistic view of the rise of bacterial that can kill human beings & can't be treated with antibiotics. I think it's reasonable & prudent to be scared shitless by that fact. All the antimicrobial gels, the overuse of antibiotics, the creation of conditions that present opportunities for these untreatable bugs to evolve is a situation that could lead to lots of folks dying. The rise of a new Black Death, a replacement for Smallpox. The two problems are different, related, & need to be addressed before a huge number of people get killed.
And if we all start living in accordance with the carrying capacity of various ecosystems I'll welcome any of you Canucks down here south of the 49th parallel if you'll raise a big enough fuss & demand decent health care for us all.