Antimicrobial resistanceaka antibiotic resistance

The Soviets did a lot of research on bacteriophages and it was pretty effective against bacterial infections during WW2

seethe isolation chip doesn't discriminate between antibiotics that work inside humans and those that don't

it's still a fantastic research tool though and props to those who came up with it

>If nanomachines become a thing
This kind of nanomachine is a meme and its niche already occupied and function already provided by phages.

>3. Reduce the human population
So... Reduce the human population to prevent a reduction in the human population?

Would you rather reduce the population on our terms or alternatively based on the bad luck of catching the latest resistant pandemic? I would rather go with reproduction control than having huge parts of the existing population die painfully.

It's a big problem for those who die from simple infections.
It's probably not a huge problem, though, for the masses: It's the cumulative effect of all the different diseases, wars, malnutrition, mental health and environmental pollution that are pushing us over the edge. One need only look at the fentanyl crisis to get an idea how bad it's going to get. Asia's carfentanil is going to morph into something even cheaper, easier to make, more powerful and deadlier; just keep adding methyl groups so it hits the brain faster.
It's only going to get harder to find stronger antibiotics and they'll mostly cause so much organ damage as to practically useless in most cases.

We need to get away from the idea of antibiotics entirely and just move on to fecal transplants. But nobody wants to because eww poop

wat

The issue is the Third World. Drug resistance nearly always originates in countries with open access to antibiotics without oversight/education on usage.

From personal experience over the last 20 years, I have watched antibiotics become popular then ineffective due to bad usage. Cut on you foot or ingrown toenail? Sprinkle amoxicilin on the wound once or twice. UTI? Take cipro for a day or two. Within a few years, bacteria is resistant and the population moves on to the next.

It is currently occurring with Zithromax, since the cost went down and availability increased.

Drug resistant TB? Russia.
Drug resistant STDs? Asia.
You all are from the first world and only see those tiny, miniscule issues. The real problem in poor countries.

Introducing artificial selection pressure for phage resistance is probably not a good idea

This, it always makes me laugh when people automatically assume a reduction in human population to equal killing them all off or some shit like that.
We have limited resources and aren't doing too much to live sustainable lives. If you want the human race to last long then you need to
1. Reduce the global population to sustainable levels and start incorporation more sustainable practices in their daily lives.
or
2. Start working on that terraforming technology because shit is going to hit the fan in the next century or so, and it would help to have an exit strategy.

>phage resistance
top kek
You can just breed a different phage that kills via a different mechanism.

become a superior full cyborg race

We have tons and tons of bacteria in our body, mostly in our poop tract. Most of them are good, they help us digest food and whatnot. These are good bacteria, commensals. Then there are bad bacteria that are also there in small proportions because they usually can't compete well with the commensals. Just having a normal "microbiota" composition means you will be safe. Antibiotics are basically just poisons. They kill living things. Some are more specific than others but for the most part they just kill stuff. Some are particularly dangerous because they kill a wide spectrum of bacteria, including most of your commensals. These antibiotics are used as a last resort, they're basically the nukes. You use them to just fuck everything up because it's gotten that bad in there.

Instead, you can get a fecal transplant. Take poop, which contains bacteria of course, from a healthy individual and transfer it to a sick person. The huge proportion of good bacteria in that poop will enter the sick person's body, take over, and drive the bad bacteria to low levels again. It's very effective for a wide variety of conditions and has none of the side effects.

This isn't the problem. The problem is that doctors want to use the latest antibiotic in order to get kickbacks from the drug manufacturers. Using much older antibiotics not under name brands anymore is dissuaded; not simply because of old resistance, but because of loss of revenue.

There is a massive cornucopia of antibiotics now.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antibiotics

New antibiotics are used until there are resistances to it. Then they are shelved and new antibiotics are created. Over the course of time, the microbes once resistant to much older antibiotics lose their resistance to it. Thus, doctors are able to reuse far older antibiotics; starting a new cycle of resistance later on.

Once science has a sufficiently large pantry of antibiotics, they can start to be cycled over sufficiently large spans of time.

...

bump

The bacteria was resistant to all antibiotics that US doctors were allowed to dispense. It is incredibly likely that we have types of antibiotics that the government keeps locked away in a safe at the CDC or whatever so that people cannot abuse them.
I wouldn't worry about a superbug wiping out all of mankind, honestly. I'd just worry about a superbug wiping out a large number of people before the government decides it's time to break out the big guns.

So you'd probably be safe if you live in a smaller town and/or stay away from sick people who travel a lot and are in and out of hospitals frequently for antibiotics or interact with people that do.

This. You can make new antibiotics by leaving the resisting bacteria in a closed environment where they can cluster and evolve to fight each other for resources. They will develop antibiotics to kill each other, and you can isolate the chemicals they produce for use against the resistant bacteria. We have the means to do more than just collect mold off or oranges or scrape stuff off of trees now.

Good that I barely leave my shithole

Yeah, cus feeding someone shit is gonna fix sepsis, or give adequate coverage perioperatively, or clear a UTI.