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Global Warning - Aug 9, 2006 - Printable Version
- Good Evening, Ladies and Germs!
by Robin Buckallew
America is at war. It is a war more costly, more deadly, more long lasting, and more futile than the war on terror or the war on drugs. It is a war that proceeds with the full cooperation and participation of the general public, and we have nearly all enlisted in the ranks of the largely volunteer army. We do not receive any salary, any benefits, any veteran’s benefits, or any medals for our part in this war. No flag-draped coffins, no twenty-one gun salutes, and no solemn memorials mark the casualties. No body count has ever been made of the dead or wounded in this war. There are no raucous anti-war protests, no sit-ins, no petitions, and no Congressional resolutions. In spite of the seemingly low-key nature of this particular war, it is a war that has the potential to be the most deadly battle ever waged in the entire history of humankind. I am talking about the war on bacteria. For millennia, humans fought a never-ending war against disease. For most of that time, it had been attributed variously to bad air, humors out of balance, or the wrath of one or another god that had been offended by improperly conducted rituals or bad behavior. It is only in the relatively recent past that science invented the microscope and discovered little “animalcules” or “wretched beasties” swimming in magnified drops of water. Even then, it took still a while longer to connect these “wretched beasties” with human disease, and to determine that they were passed from person to person through our food, our water, and our bodily secretions. Over time, medicine developed ways of fighting disease, through pasteurization, hygiene, and quarantine. The discovery of penicillin proved to be the most major breakthrough of all. Penicillin proved to be a “miracle” drug, effective against nearly every possible bacterial infection that plagued us. Disease after disease was challenged, and disease after disease fell victim to the almighty warrior, Penicillium. For some time, doctors prescribed Penicillin with abandon (carefully, of course, as some individuals proved to have potentially fatal allergies), and bacteria cowered in fear. Suddenly, however, the unthinkable happened. Old, familiar diseases, long vulnerable to the almighty antibiotic, suddenly turned the tables, and began resisting the penicillin. The rapidly reproducing, prolific bacteria had developed immunity to the most powerful weapon in our arsenal. Back at the drawing table, science searched for, and discovered, other antibiotic substances. New drugs were developed, more powerful than penicillin, able to leap giant Staphylococcus and Streptococcus in a single bound. Once more, we patted ourselves on the back, and declared the world back on the pathway toward disease eradication. Again, we spoke too soon. Quickly, more quickly this time, bacteria developed resistance to the new antibiotics. New, improved, stronger antibiotics were developed. Bacteria once again developed resistance. With every cycle, the bacteria evolved more rapidly than the cycle before. Modern medicine now includes in its arsenal antibiotics so powerful that the patient becomes too sick to function until the effects wear off. This will not be the end. No longer do scientists assume that these drugs, powerful as they are, will prove any match for the rapidly evolving, ubiquitous bacteria. Man continues to cower before an opponent so tiny he cannot be seen without powerful magnification devices.
If there are any among you who have gotten to this point in your life without ever having heard your mother tell you to wash your hands, raise your hand now (I see you over there, in the corner – where did you grow up? On the moon?). We have heard all our lives about “germs”. We bandied about the word “cooties” from our pre-kindergarten days until we got old enough to use more – um, sophisticated insults. Our instinctive response by this time has become fear and loathing. The only good bacterium is a dead bacterium – right? WRONG! In fact, we could not survive without bacteria. There are bacteria that live in our gut, and assist us with digestion. There are bacteria that eat up our messes, and help decompose our wastes, so we’re not living in a pile of human (and animal) excrement. There are bacteria that even eat petroleum, and have been used to clean up oil spills that we have carelessly created. Bacteria cover every surface on earth, and only a small fraction of them are harmful. Of course, those that are harmful are often potentially lethal, and it is only natural that we should wish to prevent the repeat of historic plagues that wiped out entire communities. Unfortunately, like so many of the other battles we have fought throughout history and around the world, we entered this one without a clear understanding of the enemy, without a focused plan of attack, without an exit strategy, and with total disregard for the extent of “collateral damage”. The economic cost of the war has been great, the death toll has been huge on both sides, and we are now and forever truly caught in a “quagmire”.
Check your bathroom. Do you have bacterial soap? The odds are you do, even if you aren’t consciously looking for it in the stores. In fact, I have discovered it is increasingly difficult to find any soap that isn’t antibacterial. I spend hours scouring the stores, looking for soap I am willing to use, and cursing the shortsighted fears that have turned every American into a germ-warrior. The full consequences of the widespread use of anti-bacterial soaps are not yet known; preliminary studies have indicated that there is the potential for increase in resistant bacterial strains from the overuse of antibacterial cleaning products. In addition, wastewater treatment plants rely heavily on bacteria to help remove organic compounds from our sewage; studies are inconclusive at this time, but it is possible that heavy use of antibacterial soaps could cause problems for the bacterial sludge in these plants. If this is so, a tool that has been a staple of water treatment at least since the time of the ancient Greeks could be lost to us forever. In addition, these antibacterial soaps are non-specific; in short, they kill the beneficial bacteria on your skin along with that which is harmful. The greatest irony of all, of course, is the recent evidence that has clearly demonstrated that you don’t get your hands any cleaner or more bacteria-free using antibacterial soap than you do with the good, old-fashioned soap and water. All you are doing is washing your hands with an illusion.
Other bacterial issues arise. For several decades, antibiotics have been a staple of modern medicine, as discussed above. The good news is that the development of antibiotics saved millions of lives. The bad news is that the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria could kill millions more before we’re done. The problem we face in this situation is widespread lack of understanding of bacterial life cycles and of evolution. We are also facing the problem that many patients who fall ill with a virus (which will not respond to antibiotics) insist upon being prescribed antibiotics in the belief that they will get well faster, and doctors, fearing the possibility of legal action if they don’t “do something”, will write the prescriptions for patients that will receive no benefit whatsoever from the drug. In addition, though doctors always caution the patients to take the entire two-week supply of antibiotics, patients often stop taking them as soon as they feel well again. At this point, very often the most vulnerable individuals will have been killed off, but a handful of bacteria that are less vulnerable, and carry genes for resistance, will still be alive, because it takes a much larger dosage to kill them. These bacteria will continue to reproduce, and will pass on the resistance genes to their offspring. Over time, instead of a colony of mostly vulnerable individuals with a few resistant, the entire community may consist of resistant bacteria. This situation is further exacerbated by the recent habit of growing stock animals in large, confined feedlots where they are in constant close contact with each other. Because this situation is a perfect breeding ground for bacterial infection, agribusiness has gotten into the habit of adding antibiotics to animal feed in heavy doses, to prevent rather than to cure. The ubiquity of antibiotics in the environment leads to still more rapid evolution of the bacteria, causing widespread resistance to many antibiotics, and further reducing the medical toolkit that could help to prevent disease.
In addition to the problems described above, there is the problem of “normal flora”. The normal flora is the benign, even beneficial bacteria that have formed symbiotic relationships with us, and live in and on our bodies. Many of these bacteria serve useful functions in both digestion and disease control. The antibiotics will wipe these bacteria out along with the harmful ones, and for a time after taking the antibiotic, we will be left without the protection that these organisms normally provide us. Doctors are aware of this, and will often upon prescribing an antibiotic tell you to be on the lookout for symptoms of a yeast infection. In the absence of the competition from the normal bacteria, yeast will often opportunistically move in and establish residence in the newly vacant “homestead”. The widespread use of antibiotics can also prove harmful to soil bacteria which are an important part of the natural food web that helps recycle the nutrients back through the system so that plants can continue to grow and produce oxygen.
Remember the cave at Lascaux (Inside, Outside, Upside Down ), and the problems with a fungus that have recently developed, threatening this unique and special piece of human history? Another hypothesis that has been proposed for the fungal growth is the use of an antibiotic footwash used to clean the feet of visitors to the cave to avoid infection problems. Some of the curators believe that this heavy use of antibiotics could have created a system in the cave conducive to fungal growth, by wiping out the normal bacterial community of the cave, reducing competition for resources, and leaving the space vacant for fungus to colonize. Will these marvelous and irreplaceable cave paintings become another casualty in our poorly thought out and rash war?
Evidence indicates that bacteria are the oldest living organisms on the earth. They are more widely dispersed than any other group of organisms, found on freezing mountaintops and in boiling hot thermal vents in the ocean floor. They exist in environments where there is no oxygen. Some of them live off hydrocarbons, literally eating the oil spills we create. Others live in the bodies of other living creatures. Bacteria are the most numerous organisms on earth, and the late Stephen J. Gould, paleontologist and Harvard professor, once calculated that, in spite of their extremely small size, the biomass of bacteria likely outweighs that of all the other creatures on earth put together. In our arrogance, we imagine ourselves to be the dominant lifeform on earth. In our arrogance, we imagine we can face off with bacteria and emerge the ultimate victors. In our arrogance, we blithely fight a battle we can never win, and we blithely imagine ourselves smarter and better equipped than those tiny, one-celled, brainless creatures that we are fighting. In reality, the meek will never likely inherit the earth, because the bacteria will never likely give up title to it. There is some indication, however, that they are willing to share the world with us, and the vast majority of them are willing to be good hosts if we are willing to be good guests. Of course, being our usual oblivious selves, we have soiled the sheets and left cigarette burns on the carpet. Now, we will have to pay the price, perhaps by sacrificing our deposit.
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