8 Science
WWW.PGCITIZEN.CA | THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2017
Humanity may lose war with bacteria
Every organism participates in a predator-prey relationship.
Everything eats and is, in turn, eaten by something else. This includes humans.
Indeed, this is one of the reasons early humans organized into tribes - to stop predation, or being eaten, by animals.
  Humans sought safety in numbers and a large number of people packed together scared away most predators.
  Furthermore, as the old joke says, in a crowd of people, you don’t have to outrun the predators. You just have to be faster than your neighbour. Yes, for individuals, there is safety in numbers.
  But the formation of tribes led
to the formation of towns and eventually cities. While this kept us safe from large animal predation, it eventually led to another form of predation - by disease and pestilence.
  Science came to the rescue. In a long progression of discoveries dating back to Louis Pasteur and beyond, scientists have worked out the cause of most disease. Tiny organisms. Bacteria and viruses.
  So, we declared war on these tiny creatures. Improvements in
sanitation in the mid-1800s helped to alleviate most of problems and, coupled with the industrial revolution, humanity prospered and populations increased. Still, epidemics wiped out millions.
  For example, in the 20th century, smallpox killed more people than died in all of the wars combined. Influenza in the form of the Spanish Flu killed more people after the First World War than the number of soldiers killed on the battlefields.
  We still haven’t conquered viruses - witness the common cold -and likely never will but the early part of the last century saw great advances in dealing with bacteria.
  The discovery of antibiotics is one of the most significant events in history. We finally had a weap-
on in this war against bacterial disease. At the time, it even looked like we might actually win.
  Evolution is a tricky thing, though, and bacteria multiply much more rapidly than humans. Darwin’s statement about “survival of the fittest” is often misinterpreted to mean survival of the strongest. It doesn’t.
  A better interpretation is survival of the best adapted. In the case of bacteria, this means bacteria capable of adapting to and defeating antibiotics are the ones which survive to produce the next generation.
  So, here we are years later with strains of staphylococcus aureus in a hospital that are immune to every antibiotic we have except one.
  And in those hospitals are strains
of bacteria immune to that final, last-chance antibiotic. When these two bacteria meet and exchange genetic information, (which is a thing bacteria do) then the staph infection will be incurable.
  Ah, you say, a scary prospect - but new antibiotics will save us. However, new drugs have to go through a rigorous screening which can take upwards of seven years. A new antibiotic discovered today, would not be available until the mid-2020s.
  Further, reports suggest there aren’t any new antibiotics being tested right now. No new drugs for much longer than seven years.
  There is no money to be made and few places to look for possible new antibiotics.
  In other words, we will soon run out of ammo in our war with bacteria because the exchange of genetic information between bacteria ensures what one bacterium knows, they all know.
  Why mention this? It is the time of year when people seems to be sick or know someone who is. And sometimes these illnesses are bacterial in origin requiring a treatment with antibiotics.
  Doctors tell us to take the pills for a full seven days but often, feeling better after three, we stop taking them. The problem is we have only taken a half-hearted swipe at the disease. In fact, the surviving bacteria will have gained a small measure of immunity to the antibiotic and will be stronger the next time.
  By not taking a full regimen of antibiotics, we simply help bacteria to get stronger and make the disease more incurable.
  We live in the age of bacteria. Fully three quarters of the biomass on this planet is made up of tiny micro-organisms too small to be seen with the naked eye. They dominate the landscape. They live in our intestines. They survive in the most inhospitable places known to science. Bacteria are the ultimate form of life capable of evolving to live in every niche available.
  Most bacteria are benign. Some, such as the organisms living in our gut, are actually beneficial as they help us to break down and consume our food. Good intestinal flora is important for our health.
  But some bacteria result in disease and we are engaged in a long standing war with these organisms. It is a war we could still lose if we do not keep fighting to the end.
  Canadian HIV/AIDS researcher drowned
  The Canadian Press
    BAL HARBOR, Fla. — A renowned HIV/AIDS researcher from Montreal has died in Florida.
    Police in Bal Harbour, Fla., say Mark Wainberg drowned Tuesday afternoon while swimming with his son.
    Acting Capt. Miguel De La Rosa says officers were called on reports of a person struggling in the water around 2:40 p.m.
    De La Rosa says Wainberg’s son was able to pull his father back to shore, where officers administered CPR.
    He says Wainberg, who was in his early 70s, was pronounced dead in hospital.
    De La Rosa says there were red flags posted at the beach due to high surf and high current at the time.
    Linda Farha, president of the Farha Foundation, a major Montreal-based HIV/AIDS research fundraising organization, said Wainberg was “enormous” in his field.
    He was one of the doctors who helped her brother, Ron Farha, who founded the organization before he died of the disease.
    “Dr. Wainberg was very present in Ron’s life and was a shining light for my brother,” she said. “He hoped that something would happen one day. That he would find a cure.”
    Farha said Wainberg was part of the medical team that discovered the first anti-viral drug to treat patients with the virus.
    “He played such a big role on so many different levels,” she said.
    “And he was certainly a believer that he would be part of the team that would find a cure, but unfortunately he passed away before that.”
    Quebec Health Minister Gaetan Barrette expressed sadness at the death.