candida is a fungi...not bacteria...
20
The article may have an error: "Recently C. auris reached New York, New Jersey and Illinois, leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add it to a list of germs deemed “urgent threats.”"
However, C. auris is not on the list, which contains three tiers of threats; urgent, serious, and concerning: https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/biggest_threats.html.
Read about the CDC's response to C. auris on their website at https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/solutions-initiative/stories/cdc-response-to-global-threat.html.
Lastly, in response to potential misconceptions in other comments: hand hygiene saves lives and does not cause antibiotic resistance. See https://www.cdc.gov/cdctv/healthyliving/hygiene/hand-hygiene-saves-lives.html.
28
Perhaps evolution has found its own cure for overpopulation and the global warming problem.
53
Life causes death. Mother Nature is the queen and she rules. I’m more afraid of the rise of white nationalism than a microbe.
31
Why on earth would he run for president when he seems to hate being Mayor & has done such lousy job. He should just spend his time at gym,avoiding all work & personal appearances.
5
There might be something else — something people seem to keep on seemingly ignoring and refusing to acknowledge — weakening our immune systems allowing for the increase in opportunistic infections like candida: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28818275
18
One day Mother Nature will terminate man's lease on the land. It appears that we will be notified of that day sooner than expected...
26
Thankfully we've fully defeated ISIS and we have a no-climb border wall and those problems are solved. All we have to do now is get that brain surgeon in Housing and Urban Development to house and urban develop this problem away.
Thanks, MAGA!
15
Soon to be a Hollywood motion picture...
5
The stage is now set for a zombie apocalypse
13
"In late 2015, Dr. Johanna Rhodes, an infectious disease expert at Imperial College London, got a panicked call from the Royal Brompton Hospital, a British medical center outside London."
It's not terribly important, but Royal Brompton Hospital is located in the Chelsea section of London.
7
For those who don’t believe in evolution- here it is. Welcome to the party. Deny it all the way to your grave.
What did they die of? A belief in “fake news”.
23
Only few words; Waooooooo,basically nobody is safe.,we are killing all the species including us...
6
The only surprise here is that it took 6 comments before someone blamed Trump. At that point I stopped reading the insanity that is posted here. I am sure if I kept going I would see someone blame climate change.
9
This is an astonishingly poorly constructed story ... more a hodgepodge of facts, unattributed statements and assumptions.
What's missing ... and glaring by its omission ... is any hint over how to mysterious germs are transmitted. By touch, by cough, by sexual contact, by being in a hospital room, by watching too much cable news?
16
Why am I supposed to go to the doctor again?
3
Mankind has come face to face with some incredible diseases and survived. At this moment, Candida auris looks to fall in that category so the fight begins again.
Will America join in this fight or have it all shunted aside by our deranged leader?
12
The accompanying video with its jaunty, cutesy tone and fast frame changes is so inappropriate to the subject matter.
7
The worldwide spread of fungus and bacterial born diseases has been decimating amphibians and bat populations so this isn’t surprising nor is the spread of its political relatives authoritarianism, misinformation, superstition and the head fungus among us in The White House.
19
"A Mysterious Infection, Spanning the Globe in a Climate of Secrecy"
I thought this was another story about trump.
23
We do like to be frightened, don't we? This is better than a zombie movie.
If you go to PubMed and type in fungal and vaccine, you'll find people have been working on vaccines for this for at least 4-5 years, and sounds like they're making progress.
In the meantime, you can tend to your own garden--the inner one. Here's a link to Dr William Davis's yogurt recipe
https://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2018/04/make-l-reuteri-yogurt/
I've been making and eating it for about 3 months now. I've yet to see all the wonderful effects he say L-reuteri yogurt will bring me, but I can testify that it's the tastiest yogurt I've ever encountered. Reckon it will do nice things for my microbiome and my immunity, as well as my taste buds.
Let the good drive out the bad.
9
23000 is still much less than gun deaths and road deaths which apparently nobody cares about like fungus
14
Are organic crops sprayed with antifungals?
8
Spanish Flu : death toll: or minus 80 Million? .. the next extinct event could be germs .. they want to survive and populated the planet also
7
Certainly Candida auris is emerging infection and a new challenge to medical profession In India there are few laboratories are equipped to detect the new strain, most of them may be discarded as Non Candida albicans with few tests we perform and many times clinicians start treating the Candida infections on their own when the laboratories do not guide or having no faculties to diagnose the emerging strains, I think in India the better option remain with use Chrome agar to have better decisions or automation
Dr.T.V.Rao MD Professor of Microbiology
5
We now have three true apocalypses: 1) antibiotic resistant bacteria; 2) antifungial resistant fungi; and 3) Alzheimers.
Soon, each will be killing over 10 million per year.
And, we have a make-believe apocalypse stealing all of our resources, spiritual and cultural energy.
2
It appears this outbreak can be traced back to use of anti-fungicides in commercial farming. If so, this is just another example where "technology" is creating dangerous and unpredictable outcomes in our lives. "Tech" whether it be in chemicals, micro-biology, or anywhere else, needs to be kept out of our food supply entirely. Commercialized farming is the culprit: multi-national corporations are putting the food on the table. These are the same organizations that gave us the asbestos holocaust and the Johns Manville corporation.
10
Why are hospital staff allowed to leave wearing their dirty hospital scrubs? See often in nyc. Seems like and easy route for pathogens.
27
Not long ago your sociopathic president, after campaiging for eliminating a large number of Federal regulations across the board, offered the UK a quick trade deal, especially for U.S. agricultural products in the midst of the UK chaotic leaving the EU. The immediate response of the Brits was LAUGHTER! CLORINATED CHICKENS? Deadly pestisides used on fruit and vegetables? Fortunately my wife and I with four children raised in our European Union country where we can enjoy the stiff food and drink regulations seriously applied. Need I report that all six of us are slim, happy and HEALTHY?
28
How is the germ transmitted from person to person?
8
So, start planting fungus resistant plants and raising fungus resistant livestock.
3
Sounds a lot like the early 1970’s sci-fi film “The Andromeda Stain”. But no fiction.
7
Hope somebody sees this. Colloidal silversilver mixed with hydrogen peroxide will work for tongue. Ozone bombing followed by simple green will treat environenvironment. We're in the last days. Mites are one of the carriers. I'm amateur scientist. When a shot of 100 proof Bourbon don't kill it, its time to worry!
4
Interesting how the cases are concentrated in the bluest states.
There's an idea: weaponize Candida and spray it on flyover country. Trump couldn't possibly win if the Republicans are all dead.
6
Ahhh the memories of being a clinical registered nurse supervisor when
MRSA and VRSA made their resistant entrance on stage in the early 90’s.
Meclicillin and Vancomycin were lifesavers till they were not.
Now this.....not a bacteria but a pervasive resistant fungus among us.
And a epidemiology nightmare begins.
In secret kinda.
Apparently the World Health Organization needs reorganization to deal with global outbreaks.
Population control is going to happen by Mother Nature.
8
Bacteria used to just be revolting, but it seems they are flat out rebelling against their antibiotic-abusing human overlords.
4
Excellent article, but a shame you had to lower NYT's standards and credibility by quoting Dr. Kevin Kavagh. This man does not believe that "opioids have ANY legitimate use and that anyone who has ever taken them is an addict." I include the quotations because he told me those exact words last week at a conference in DC.
I found myself forced to take the article's sources with a grain of salt after seeing Dr. Kavagh quoted.
8
Just suppose elites at the top have gauged that the earth has too many people, and this is a solution for that problem.
This is the opening of the planned great pandemic designed to get populations down to a sustainable level.
The poor will die,
The rich get by,
As it always has been.
Rats will get fat.
Roaches will feast,
Death rules, it's hardly a sin.
Welcome to the Charnel House.
4
But don't worry! The pizza executive that Trump put in charge of the Surgeon General's Office read an article about it in the Sunday supplement and is now thinking about doing something. MAGA!
11
If you can't even bring yourselves to show humanity towards your own people, neighbours, children, how do you plan to fix this problem? Corruption starts with people thinking of themselves first.
4
We’d really hate for someone’s business (i mean medical care facility) to get bad publicity because they happened to admit people with medical issues.
4
Only the strong survive....
We wanted to feed the world and relieve human suffering.
So we waged a poison-chemical war of extermination on microbial life.
We gave them no quarter.
But that which did not kill them selected for their strongest to endure.
And now our ancient enemies are on the offensive again.
Of course, they don't know anything about this war.
They just want to survive....
2
In the end you are going to die from something. Don't focus on that. Enjoy doing what makes you happy while you are able to do it.
2
Hidden in plain sight: a potential extinction event for homo sapiens.
2
Lex Irregular apologizes -
In previous post, please read "protists" (all complex single-complete-celled critters) for amoebae, a class of the above, if he remembers his biological ordering of things properly. Come to think of it, he may have mixed kingdoms with families and phyla himself.
There are studies that show Amish who live next to their animal stalls are healthier with less asthma than Mennonites who live about a mile away from them.
There is also a long term study that compared families who washed their dishes by hand and those who used dishwashers that sterilized the dish ware, and the folks who washed dishes by hand went to the doctors much less frequently.
The healthiest thing you can do is eat dirt, be dirty and get over yourself.
4
My wife died last year of a Flesh Eating Bacteria, Necrotizing Fasciitis, for which there is no magic bullet, only amputation is used to fight it. 80 percent of those who get it die. It has been around for ever, but takes in the USA perhaps one life out of 300,000 deaths. If it was to spread it would be a disaster. Sheldon Weeks, Vermont
9
I really welcome this article. The threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) seems to me a bigger threat than even climate change. Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical industry seems to me to be more worried about making money than developing a defence against it. Obviously that's not all that needs to be done. I don't know about the US but I believe that hospitals in the UK are developing antimicrobial resistance units to try to deal with this looming threat for instance. People including the agricultural industry have got to take this threat seriously as soon as possible in my opinion.
https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news-and-events/support-our-campaigns/tackling-antimicrobial-resistance.htm
4
Quick question:
Doe Candida auris affect species other than our own?
3
Incorrect caption to the picture. We are not ‘driving this with the use of anti fungicides’, it is with the use of ‘fungicides’. Both the caption, and the rampant use of all pesticides, including antibiotics, need to be corrected.
There is a better, more responsible way to farm.
Because we hope there is a future of our children and grandchildren.
11
Once again, the profits of big pharma and big agribusiness take precedent over both science and the well-being of people. It's the inevitable path where corrupt, weakling politicians allow corporations to regulate government instead of exercising their assigned responsibility to regulate the corporations.
10
I’ll be having a teaspoon of bleach three times a week.
3
Not nuclear war. Hunger or famine. Climate catastrophes or asteroids. No. We will be done it by a fungus among us.
4
Shame on Dr. Price for taking the vegans to task when adoption of the plant-based diet is one of the obvious solutions to this problem. No more need to be permeating animals with antibiotics for profit's sake. But our kakistrocracy is too feckless, too sold out to move forward towards the greater good. Risible.
6
Doomsday (n)
- The last day of the world's existence.
I.E. every day in today's world. If it's not one thing it's the other. If we are in fact so doomed, I'd much rather live out whatever days we have left in peace and tranquility than constantly stressed about the next thing that will kill me.
3
Perhaps I'm missing something, but the article starts saying that C.Auris is a newly discovered germ. But then it says much further down that it appeared for the first time in 2009, i.e. 10 years ago. Maybe the opening could be corrected, so that it doesn't give the wrong impression to a number of readers.
3
Another reason for us all to reconsider the wisdom of a meat-based diet.
3
The physicians' creed is "Do no harm".
It is not "Protect your reputation" or "the Hospital's". It is not "Keep the patients coming in the door", or "Decide what's inconvenient for the public to know".
This silence is doing harm, Doctor!
9
There is a solution and the big pharma's are responsible for this. It's H202 Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide therapy, They don't want us to have this information because it will kill their profits because it's cheap and effective. I have done this therapy. Follow directions and due your own due diligence but also Google search "The Many Benefits of Hydrogen Peroxide" by David G. Williams,
1
"but antibiotics are also used widely to prevent disease in farm animals"
I think this is understating it by a huge margin. Antibiotics are used to fatten healthy animals more quickly - laws written to allow only the use of antibiotics for the treatment of illness in animals generally rely on self-regulation and we all know how that goes. And this only considers the US.
Agriculture is the primary driver for antibiotic resistance.
The elephant in the room is the desire for cheap meat is going to send us right back to the days before the advent of antibiotics.
9
The problem of drug resistant organisms is predictable. Patients want physicians to "do something" for every sniffle, bruise or scrape.The fast and easy way out is to prescribe an antibiotic in person or over the phone. It satisfies the patient who demands intervention, is time effective for the doctor who must have so many patient encounters per day and it's profitable for pharmacies and drug companies. The devastating result of this self-inflicted problem has many villains to blame.
7
This could become a big problem, but is not. Maybe it will go away as quickly as it arrived. Maybe not. But hospitals are doing what hospital do--paying attention to invasions of pathogens and epidemiology. It is probably true, as my physician father always said, that the worst place to be ill is in the hospital. If hospitals are fully occupied by fungicide/bactericide-resistant agents, then we are pretty much all up the creek without a paddle.
1
We so don't know what we're doing. We are turning the planet into one gigantic science experiment, the outcome of which seems to be to create an environment where the deadlier and resistant strains have more room to grow and spread unchecked by the natural barriers we actively eliminate. Maybe this is just irrational fear (I don't think so). However, the dismantling of the complexity of the natural world has consequences.
4
I am sympathetic to hospitals' desire to manage panic. Have we the public shown any meaningful responsibility in how we handle medical information? The CDC has been trying to minimize antibiotic abuse and promote vaccines for decades, but patients still clamor for quick-fixes for the common cold, and even well-educated people have jumped on the anti-vaxxer bandwagon. I don't have all that much trust in our for-profit medical establishment, but at the same time I can see why "a climate of secrecy" has emerged.
5
Such secrecy abounds in hospitals, and it is nothing new. 15 years ago was faced with having to have non-emergency surgery. I had a choice of three hospitals for the procedure. In order to make an informed decision, I inquired of each of them about their surgical infection rates for the procedure I was to undergo. I was not able to get one scintilla of useful information, and my persistence only met one stone wall after another. State health officials also refused to provide me with any information or guidance. The most common deflection can be summarized as, "These are very complicated issues underlain by very complex data. The public can't possibly understand them."
In ways that threaten and disadvantage us as patients, our healthcare system is an impenetrable black box. Except for Rule #1: Money first, patients second.
Caveat emptor -- your life may depend upon it.
7
There has been a bit more transparency over the past 15 years. Now you can go to Hospital Compare in line to see infection rates for certain types of surgeries as hospitals are required to report them in order to participate in Medicare.
3
'The mystery of C. auris’s emergence remains unsolved, and its origin seems, for the moment, to be less important than stopping its spread.'
The mystery of its emergence may hold the answer to the problem. If the growth of this organism has been fomented by the use of pesticides, the solution to the problem may not simply be in the design of some new drug.
An important question to consider: is human life more important than profit?
4
I can imagine that C.auris is difficult to eradicate from the environment. I can't get the smell of mildew out of an improperly stored tent no matter how vigorously I wash it.
While were talking about fungal infections, consider the various creatures that fungi turn into zombies. There are ground-living ants who climb trees, cling to the highest branch, then die as the fungus blossoms out of their body and spreads its spores. There are various creatures which the fungus causes to seek their predators. There are those who believe that Candida might be able to cause sugar cravings in humans.
I'm curious whether C.auris causes people who are infected to behave in ways that help it spread. Are there any studies on the behavior of the man who died from C.auris at Mt. Sinai?
Side question: Since when is a fungus a germ? I thought the term "germ" applied to bacteria and viruses. Isn't a fungus a a different sort of pathogen, in a class all its own?
4
Assuming that small amounts of antibiotics or their precursor molecules "escape" from the factories where the drugs are produced, I wonder if the effluents discharged from those manufacturing facilities (in countries where regulations are, relative to the US, lax) are contributing to the rise of super bugs.
1
With fewer humans, there would be a lot less disease, and much less opportunity for organisms to develop (think fewer Petri dishes). Of course, nobody ever talks about that, since apparently "growth!" is all that matters.
3
Can’t say i know a lot about this bacteria business, but i once had a crush on a girl named Candida. She was a cute. Unfortunately she was in love with another guy, so i had to move on.
3
And when they wash down the rooms, the patient and the equipment, where does the liquid go? Into the public sewer system where it is "cleaned" and reused on crops. Some cities are experimenting with toilet-to-tap, so how do they filter for such antibiotic resistent pathogens? Excellent article. Thanks.
11
I stand corrected; Dr. Price didn't so much take vegans to task as ignore the fact that adoption of a plant-based diet could go a long way with regard to resolving the excessive use of antibiotics.
2
Frightening. Two years ago I was hospitalized with Bullous Pemphigoid, an auto-immune disease, and on high doses of Prednisone. A death sentence had I been exposed.
Soon after having arthroscopic knee surgery, I contracted a serious staph infection and returned to the same hospital (which has an excellent reputation) for diagnosis/treatment. The nurse who treated me became defensive when I suggested that I may have picked up the infection during surgery. I wasn't blaming them for doing anything wrong - just wanted them to consider that possibility.
14
The uncontrolled use of antibiotics needs to stop.
It needs to stop in agriculture and it needs to stop in the developing world (see article on over-use in Kibera, Kenya).
If we do not do something in a few short decades infections, which are commonly treated now, are going to lead to large numbers of deaths.
This is due, almost exclusively, to over-population which requires agriculture to constantly increase yields to feed third-world baby factories (third-world countries).
3
When I need a new doctor because of a move to another area, I always seek out information on who pushes the least number of pills on patients. What I've found is that the most accurate recommendations come from employees of independent heath food stores run by old hippies or young ones (forget the chains in the malls). They still have to go to doctors, but they tend to be more discriminating. Most of the doctors recommended are GPs in a small practice.
When I complained to a personal friend who is a doctor that his profession tends to overprescribe, he looked at me aghast. "You have to realize that many patients show up at a doctor's office expecting a pill," he said. I'm ornery enough to wonder why that matters. Since when does a patient's expectations rule medical care? Since the last few decades, I suppose, when doctoring became a job rather than a calling. The business end of medicine has taught them to respond to a demand for pills with a supply of pills.
Given that patients have options, they need to understand that THEY, not doctors, are their primary care provider. If a doctor offers an antibiotic, ask for proof that the infection is bacterial. Even in my tiny area, the doctor I use has a lab on site that can quickly determine such.
What I'm saying is that we are at fault. Stem the demand, and the supply will follow suit.
11
I am grateful for this article. It increases awareness and it is truly frightening. I now have visions of earth covered in brown goop. Was that the intent--to scare people?
The article is one sided because there is no balance in the story about how the medical/research community studying ways to combat the bug. I am disappointed that it didn't also cover what we are doing about it. While I am glad to be aware of it, I simply cannot believe that the medical community is sitting on their hands in the dark, afraid and in fear.
3
@ladyreadalaot
You missed one of the central points of the article: Secrecy. It hampers not just the information flow that you seek, but also research. And it can kill you.
1
Would organic farming methods solve or prevent an issue of this nature? Pesticides in our soil, air, and water is destroying the planet and killing us.
4
Manure from animals fed antibiotics is used on organic vegetables so...
2
An alarming article but also frustratingly lacking in articulating the real reasons and real scope of the problem. The US needs to have a Massive increase in basic biological and ecological research which cannot then be stolen and patented for profit.
There is a pervasive and completely wrong notion of drugs and chemicals as silver bullets that are extremely selective and accurate in their targets. All agricultural 'cides kill far more than their intended pest organisms. Sometimes they kill the organisms that are keeping the pest at bay, unleashing far greater opportunity for the pest.
We live in an ecosystem of microbiota All around and all inside us. In the air, water and virtually all surfaces. Humans have thousands of different bacteria and fungi species literally All over our bodies continuous into our mouths on through to our anuses. We quickly would Die without them. When we are healthy they live on us in a dynamically balanced ecosystem. We suffer when that ecosystem is disrupted.
The importance of the gut biome is starting to be explored and connections are being made between it and all kinds of diseases and basic bodily cell processes, from gene expression to obesity, schizophrenia to cancer. Here still it is important to avoid oversimplify those emerging relationships.
That's why caution is so very important when mass chemicals are foisted on us to improve our lives. Sanitizers, scents, packaging materials and additives, food additives, ALL have an effect.
12
One needs look at most any ecological study on specie population and see how clever mother nature is in bringing the population back down to a sustaining level or deciding to just let that specie die out. I wonder what she's decided for homo sapiens. Hopefully it is just another of the many warnings she has provided.
4
I’ll remember this the next time the militant vegans tell me that eating meat is deadly.
In all seriousness, multidrug-resistant organisms are one of our biggest health threats, yet the general public is clueless. I hope we can elect a new president and congress that will fully fund the CDC and NIH to help combat this problem.
4
This is madness. We are a part of a vast web of life on this planet. Yet our hubris is we think we are somehow removed from it? That nothing we do will come back at us in ten-fold fashion given sufficient time? So we declare war on the microbe (for instance), or anything we deem harmful to us?
We need to inculcate a philosophy that we live in concert with all other living things within this vast terrarium we call the Earth. We are not solitary, much less supreme. There is nothing we can throw at the panoply of life that approximately 4 Billion years of evolutionary learning will not aid it in overcoming. So we either throttle our insane actions back a few notches or that web will turn and deal with us in its time, and in its fashion, as it is beginning to do. Our choice.
John~
American Net'Zen
7
One of the issues is that medicine/farming/cleansing products focus on “getting rid” of bugs. Another approach is to look at “installing” good bugs so there is harmony with the microbe system. Some of the work around using probiotics (with the appropriate antibiotic regimen) in a Clostridium dificile infection focuses on this.
Btw, everyone getting their vaccines also are a nice way of reducing the need for antibiotics in the population. And demanding less antibiotic use in animal products. Just saying.
4
"Where in the world did it come from?"
I'm not surprised of this kind of stuff. There will be more coming. This world will continue to get darker and darker. That's not news. But the good news is, there is Hope. No weapons forged against me shall prevail.
1
I don’t want to know unless I can do something. One less thing to helplessly worry about.
3
Would one run into an oak tree, because, suspecting it of being an animal, you knew it would run away?
No, Not Zen, Heds and captions, I'm afraid.
Fungi and bacteria are as close to one another as trees and animals.
They are from completely different kingdoms of life.
Yet, you speak of a horrible fungus, (the source of the original bactericidal antibiotics - the closer-to-fungus-than-bacteria common blue bread mold Penicillium produces ... guess Penicillin, advance to Go and collect $200.
The world of microbes is more diverse than macro-life: from are-they-alive? They kill us after all prions through viruses, bacteria, amoebae, molds and fungi - the last two oft easily visible in their complex organized forms - yes, that mushroom, the fruiting body of a fungal community. can be a delightful meal or instant death.
Please, do not confuse genera: Antibiotics, are literally "anti-lifes" - poisons. Some, like the Penicillium fungus exudate kill bacteria alone, some antibiotics must be used with care, lest we kill the host we are trying to cleanse of a deadly organism.
The article is very confusing to those who have not spent any time building colonies of bacteria, then dropping paper disks infused with antibiotics to see which ones will kill efficiently, which only harm, the surrounding organisms. (Used to be standard Jr. High Biology). Please parse your pathogens! Explain the differences between all the things that can kill us, though they cannot be seen!
-Lex Irregular
More than twenty years ago Laurie Garrett wrote about the growing problem of drug resistant microbes. (The Coming Plague)
I had already read about the problem years earlier. Yet, here we are with the problem becoming worse each year and the US government has failed to respond to this crisis.
Climate change. Drug resistant bacteria and fungi. Our extraordinary stupidity is leading the way to our own extinction. At that point the planet will breathe a sigh of relief. Or it would if it could.
4
Some have asked what the situation in Canada is with respect to C. auris. According to Health Canada, as of November 1, 2018, "In Canada, the first two patients reported to be infected with C. auris had received health care in India. In one case, genomic characterization suggested that the infection was imported from the Indian subcontinent. Additional imported cases are anticipated. Transmission in Canadian health care facilities is inevitable."
At least we have the facts.
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/reports-publications/canada-communicable-disease-report-ccdr/monthly-issue/2018-44/issue-11-november-1-2018/article-1-candida-auris-management.html
1
It mentions that this C. auris has come to Illinois. WHERE in Illinois? The US has had 144 cases of Candida auris in Illinois, according to the C.D.C., since 2013 and you aren't telling where in Illinois this happened? In Chicago, 50 percent of the residents at some nursing homes have tested positive for it, the C.D.C. has reported.
People have a right to know so they can decide whether or not to visit or go to a particular hospital. Money [$$$ profit] should not be the determinant to keep silence.
I am a hospice volunteer at a hospital in NW Indiana. According to your map it has also come to Indiana. WHERE!!!
"Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients — or prospective ones."
3
If this is an international crisis, why did the authors not contact the World Health Organization and other supra-national bodies or at least the national health boards of the countries named in the article? CDC is authoritative for sure but this article seems to be prepared in a rush.
2
If this fungus has spread to India and spreading fast since 2009, why am I coming to know about it ten years later. How is that no one knows about it there also even though the first case was detected in New York in 2013 ? What purpose does it serve ? Is it really that deadly fungus ? If so plenty of people might have died due to it in India itself in a decade. It can in no way be hidden from the media and people at large since India is a democracy and simply not communist regime.
Let’s not unnecessarily get scared.
60
@Sivaram Pochiraju I'm afraid that India may be one of the problem countries to my understanding in terms of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) which includes antimicrobial resistance in fungi. Possibly because of the lack of information about the problem that you mention? There is this report from the New York Times for instance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/world/asia/superbugs-kill-indias-babies-and-pose-an-overseas-threat.html
17
@Sivaram Pochiraju- So, if I understand your ‘belief/concern’ caution, you’re not going to get concerned until what, maybe half a billion Indians have died? Sort of a anti-science position. Democracies know everything, and scientists either lie or don’t know what they spent decades of their life trying to understand; have I got that right? Also, you might consider that politicians almost always act only well past the point when they should have. In that regard our politicians are at best very, very human as are we all.
29
@Sivaram Pochiraju
41 % of the infected patients developed a deadly disease (says the article), not serious enough?
25
Scientists will not be able to collaborate on research in an atmosphere of secrecy, so the Times’ has performed a public service here. But humans continue to upset the microbiome routinely, whether through agricultural practices to enhance yield (arguably needed) to the day to day consumption of probiotics and “cleanses,” (risks and benefits unproven) designed to alter natural gut flora.
1
Humans seemed to have forgotten that microbes are also living organisms who want to survive. So the more we try to kill them the more they will look for a way to mutate to ensure their survival. We have been feeding our animals, crops and species such prolific amounts of these drugs for so many years now that we are now reaping what we sowed - mutant strains that are now stronger and smarter than us when it comes to survival. They were here on earth before us and will be here after we've destroyed our environment and ourselves.
4
I have worked in nursing homes over the years. The last was in September 2012. I was unaware of this. The problem we are familiar with is C. difficile (Clostridium) that is found in the intestines and causes severe diarrhea. It's very difficult to treat. But C. aureus is another matter all together when even a doctor admits he's afraid to treat a patient. This reminds me of the early days of treating patients with AIDS who healthcare workers were afraid and some won't even deal with the patients.
4
I m having a hard time intellectually integrating news about the next super bugs and alarms about environmental destruction. We have vast amounts of medical knowledge and the technologies. We can develop the technologies to deal with any bug. We have treatments now for rabies, for and for HIV. The money in pharmaceutical development is absolutely obscene. I used to work as a consultant for a multi-national pharmaceutical company and I was floored. But we don't have the resources and the technology to deal with real existential threats, such as arising from the refusal of governments and industries to stop burning fossil fuels.
4
So what is new, besides a new class of drug resistant harmful organisms -- fungi.
Farmers have been feeding animals antibiotics to promote weight gain for well over 30 yeas We have known for well over 20 years that feeding antibiotics to animals breeds antibiotic resistant bacteria. The response, after much pushing by the medical community was to bar their use solely to promote weight gain. But, not to prevent illness.
The result, big ag finds helpful vets to prescribe the same antibiotics in the same dose to prevent disease due to the crowded conditions. Everyone is happy, the medical community is stroked, ag business continues to operate and make profits, Pharma continues to sell massive quantities of antibiotics to farmers and the bacteria continue to evolve. Nothing will happen, who wants to hurt Monsanto or Tyson Foods or Perdue Foods?
12
Seems to be most prevalent in first world countries or countries with cheap air travel and not Africa and 3rd World. Side effect of progress and cheap air transportation?
Hardly secret. You can look it up on government web sites and Wikipedia. But it's just one more of a long line of antibiotic resistant microbes over the last few decades. They hardly raise eyebrows anymore. There's going to be a lot more of them too.
1
I was in my local (incredible) hospital a few days ago. As I sat in a waiting room, I realized that something seemed strange about it. Finally, I saw that all of the magazine racks were empty. All of the coffee tables and end tables were empty. No magazines (donated by local citizens), no newspapers.
As I left the hospital, I had to pass through a couple of other waiting areas. They were also completely bare of anything except empty tables and chairs. In light of this article, I think this is sound policy on the part of the facility. It's most likely that our hospital got the news in this article well before the public.
Nevertheless, I emailed a copy of the article to all friends who have a "need to know," those i vulnerable populations.
3
Re the sudden absence of magazines and newspapers from hospital waiting rooms — that’s good news because it suggests that the much-handled reading material has been recognized as an easy route of transmission and infection. The safest thing to do while waiting in a medical facility of any sort is to bring your own reading material. And don’t put it down anywhere.
Environmentalists have been warning about the danger posed by the massive overuse of antibiotics and antimycotics in crop- and livestock-factory-farming for more than a decade: The appalling conditions in which animals are raised in crowded stalls require they be given massive doses of drugs to stay alive and that, in turn, means the animals are getting latest generation antibiotics and antimycotics, which are normally denied to patients. The mere sales figures of antimycotics to farmers ought to make clear over-subscription of antimycotics to patients cannot explain the sudden emergence of C.aurus globally.
People have ignored reports of the misery of animals raised in confined, unhygienic spaces where they are administered hormones together with antibiotics and antimycotics so they can be slaughtered in machine-like processes. Now they are being asked to forego antibiotics and antimycotics to prevent the spread of resistant strains. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t animals be raised in the open where they would not contact disease so that humans be allowed to continue receiving the benefits of antimycotics?
6
"His idea is that C. auris actually has existed for thousands of years, hidden in the world’s crevices, a not particularly aggressive bug. But as azoles began destroying more prevalent fungi, an opportunity arrived for C. auris to enter the breach,"
Perhaps C. auris can be fought with the "more prevalent fungi."
1
One can readily understand that there are psychological and commercial concerns about identifying infectious sites, but in this case as in most others, "sunshine is the best disinfectant " - transparency/full disclosure will better help control the spread of this menace.
2
A chilling but very necessary enlightenment of a serious problem that we all face. The video should be shown in every science classroom. I plan on showing it when I discuss the chapter on the Immune System in my college anatomy classes.
The big question to me is, now that we know that these antibiotic resistant bacteria/fungi will affect those with a compromised or lowered immune system, let’s address how we can help people support and strengthen their immune systems.
As a jumping off point, let’s inform the public of the importance of exercise, good nutrition, quality sleep, and stress management on our immune systems.
I would welcome an expert panel to confirm the research on the above and introduce new ideas on accomplishing the same.
3
As for cancer, now, immune system boosters may be an answer to some of these antibiotic resistant infections. Fungi, like mushrooms, have been extracted and used to successfully boost the immune system in cancer patients, and in other cases eliminated infections, such as, HPV.
To Trista in CA.: Well, some people believe that there will never be an acknowledged, general "cure" for cancer. They see what happened after the polio vaccine was developed. There's too much money involved in keeping cancer going.
@Miss B Cancer is not an entity. It is a multitude of individual conditions. There is no silver bullet for “Cancer.” Some are more easily treatable than others. I’m a physician who lost my brother to blood cancer. I’m amazed people think we in healthcare would willingly allow family members to die, or die ourselves (we get cancer, too!) all to keep the profitability rolling. I suppose the notion that there are terrible diseases that we haven’t yet conquered is too scary for some to accept, and that I at least can understand.
3
Antibiotic prescriptions are still given automatically to kids getting their wisdom teeth out and in various other prophylactic situations.
Ask, ask, ask! “Would it be ok to hold on to the prescription and just watch and wait? What should I look for?” My kids have avoided a couple of dozen rounds of antibiotics.
11
There is a “Catch-22” involved in antibiotic use and discovery and development in the world. As the article well describes antibiotic use in agriculture and in poorer countries is not highly regulated leading to emergence of new resistant strains. In developed countries antibiotic prescribing to patients is controlled to minimize emergence of these strains so that new antibiotics are used sparingly. This leads to very low markets for these products and little incentive for companies to develop them. The FDA and CDC are aware of this situation and are proposing new ways to assure the large capital required is available. Nothing has been enacted yet and needs congressional attention. The agricultural area needs to be investigated as well. Until government intervenes with proper policy on both sides progress will be limited.
4
In the US, pesticide devices like the one mentioned in the article as being used to apply the vaporized hydrogen peroxide in the UK hospital are not tested for efficacy or safety prior to marketing. While these devices are used in healthcare settings, they are regulated by the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs.
This organization also regulates the fungicides cited as a potential cause of the C. auris rise. I can predict no action will be taken as the agricultural-industrial complex holds sway. Look at chlorpyrifos, dicamba, glyphosate.
8
I am a middle school teacher who sometimes catches whatever students come to school with because parents have usually no sick days to stay home. So I get bronchitis once a year. Whenever I cough, some of my colleagues immediately ask whether I have seen a doctor yet and whether I am on antibiotics. To both questions I answer yes because I have given up on telling them about the dangers of taking antibiotics for something that will clear up on its own in time and in most cases. I have gone as far as giving them the name of the antibiotic I am allegedly on, so these well-meaning colleagues will leave me be. And these are college educated folks. So what do you expect from poor people who have no real access to quality health care?
19
Call me crazy but isn't there an antibiotic crisis in the US which is worse than the opiod crisis. Why do doctors write scripts for antibiotics when the ailment is viral (flu to name one)? It happens every day. I've used antibiotics infrequently and never for things that they don't cure. I am hoping I am in the minority that responds to them when I do need them Iif ever).
9
The reason is to push back the secondary bacterial infection which was caused by the virus. The problem is the uses of the agents in farming.
2
I lost my dad last month in March 2019 due to some unknown infection, none of the antibiotics were helpful.
Even colistin and other anti fungal medicines did not worked, he walked in opd for x Ray for normal cough but the infection took his life while in CCU after being on Ventilator for 10 days.
6
Something that caught my eye in this article --- about the 8 million expected to die from cancer in 2050. This tells me that despite the next thirty years of intensive research and supposedly progress in medical and biological science, genetics, AI, molecular biology; despite innovations, treatments and breakthroughs, etc., we STILL will not have anything approaching a true handle on cancer? That is even more depressing and dismaying to me than the fungus, frankly.
That prediction tells me that the best minds in medical science, synergizing over decades via instantaneous communications technology, must still just accept that cancer will be the victor for many millions no matter what we do; what research we throw into the fray for at least the next three decades (probably longer?) That we are declaring surrender in advance.
As a baby boomer who grew up amid the amazing progress of the 1950s and 1960s there was so much to hope for. And on that topic, why do we still not have a a workable artificial heart lo this half century after the first one? Look what we did with computer technology in the meantime. One would think we could have new hearts "in about an hour" by now. Seriously, I think medical progress has stalled profoundly. No more Pasteurs for us. To me, this prediction is a major bummer. (Of course healthcare costs will probably keep soaring, though.)
6
Doesn’t look like we’ll have to worry about lack of progress in finding a cure for cancer when a superbug is likely to wipe us out.
1
8 million people out of a population of over 7 billion isn’t very much. Less than 1 in 1,000 will die from cancer (which is among the “killers of last resort”) in the next 30 years? That’s pretty good.
Homo sapiens sapiens (ostensibly sapiens) has severely destabilized the balance of nature. It's always a shifting balance, but shifts are met with constant responses and counter-reactions, and extreme shifts such as the accelerating losses of flora and fauna species and/or their habitats via human impositions and insults over a relatively short period of geological time are met with extreme responses.
Somehow this fungus has lost a balancing predator or is moving into a void left by a severely diminished or extinguished form of life, or underwent mutation in response to something that threatened it, such as a fungicide or other chemical. It also may be flourishing in rising temperatures.
Similar to the effect of acceleration in drug-resistant bacteria and mutating viri, we should again be on notice that our organism's adaptability and inventiveness, though keys to human development on the planet so far, also have their limits in our ecological niche and ultimately may ironically be humans' downfall.
Have we pushed the envelope too far? "What have we done to the Earth?! What have we done to our fair Sister?!" - Jim Morrison And that was asked in 1966, over half a century ago. A lot of damage has been done since then, since Earth Day in 1970. It sounds idealistic and trite, even naive, to our jaded and cynical human culture, but was Joni Mitchell right in a very, very real sense in insisting even back then, "We've got to get ourselves back to some semblance of a Garden?"
9
The eminent evolutionary biologist, the late Stephan J. Gould, scoffed at the notion that humans are the dominant life force on Earth.
Microbes rule the roost, he asserted. We would not exist without them. Good microbes or bad; their evolution will always be a step ahead of our efforts to control them.
28
Finally, the truth is being revealed. Many people who were treated with massive doses of antibiotics many years ago are now discovering that they have Systemic Candidiasis. Medical professionals have refused to care for them. Maybe now, they will get the help that they need and deserve.
5
We're wiping out species literally by the day with our rampant use of chemicals, pesticides and herbicides. Should it come as any big surprise that we could do the same to our own species?
14
"Even the C.D.C., under its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks. State governments have in many cases declined to publicly share information beyond acknowledging that they have had cases."
Every nation in the world except for America has an integrated public health system - except for America. The unwillingness of state governments to share information is in my view a violation of the US Constitution: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Allowing the existing public health system will not insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare nor secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
If we do not transform our public health system into one suitable to the many threats we face in the 21st century a future President may need to declare a national public health emergency of unprecedented scope.
9
Never had realized discoverer of penicillin also said to beware, the bacteria will def strike back.
Chilling, important article.
9
We may be looking at the microbial result of a perfect storm: widespread anti-fungal use in agriculture combined with extensive chronic anti-fungal treatment of immune-compromised patients and an organism that does not respond to routine surface sterilization methods surviving well on environmental surfaces. Apparently chlorine bleach seems to work in lab tests.
Resistant strains are not really a mystery being explained for the most part by Darwinian natural selection under antimicrobial pressure. As noted, this type of disaster has been in the predicted for decades but corporate profits have won out yet again.
Certainly scientists are already working on molecular diagnostics for rapid routine detection that can be widely distributed. Combination therapy seems to work in many cases, but clearly far more research will be needed.
Patients have every right to know where the C. auris infections have occurred. This should be mandated by law. This would encourage care centers to take extra precautions in their clean-up procedures to avoid being on the list of sites of recurring contamination.
10
This is a good development. There are too many people on the planet, societies driven by greedy people and blinkered people inciting wars. It is truly impressive to to see Nature come up with yet another way - as impartial as a good parent - to clean house.
7
What is in question with the apparition of new diseases is the entire organization of the world economy. Many countries use fungicides and antibiotics systematically in food production. That should be unlawful (the EU already outlaws antibiotics in feed for animals to grow faster, etc.) Meanwhile advertising is increasingly advantaged over Research and Development
Of the nearly $30 billion that drug companies now spend on medical marketing each year, around 68 percent (or about $20 billion) goes to persuading doctors and other medical professionals—not consumers—of the benefits of prescription drugs. This enormous spending on advertising should be unlawful, and the money should be directed towards research, in particular in new antibiotics: it would have a huge impact.
Also government labs should work on new antibiotics, when drug companies don't see enough of a profit motive: there thousands in nature… As bacteria and fungi have existed for billions of years.
8
feedlot animals, herd animals penned up and fatted for market, often get these kinds of herd contagions.
of course, human isn't a feedlot animal, even if it does work in veal pen cubicles and crowd into cities churned up by traffic of every kind. still, the similarity is kinda striking.
but no, let's blame it on the revenge of the bacteria. those pesky microbes. if only they would let us crowd in peace. after all, crowding is in our future, as far as the mind of a herd can comprehend such things.
3
@drollere
As you are the senior scientist of the group, it is your responsibility to provide a viable method to organize the material cohesively.
@drollere
You haven't given a reasonable premise for these claims that you make regarding the conditions favorable to the cause of this contagion. It would seem the discussion is frames around a ruse of sorts, to validate the almost impossible claims you make here.
Europeans allegedly do not generally eat American milk and meat,
because of fear of hormones and antibiotics.
I realize the above statement itself displays simplification and
ignorance, so I hasten to acknowledge the controversy is seemingly
separate from the particular disease under discussion.
But of course the over utilization of antibiotics comes home to roast
us, while I acknowledge I conflate the over utilization of antibiotic with
the awful disease some scientists may be wrongly conflating.
There may be an Andromed strain or perhaps a recent meteor cause.
If the hypotheses are
so proven, then ... novels and movies are
not necessarily merely entertainment alone.
A most unpleasant reality, and knock on wood, they aren't gonna
vegetate me in a nursing home.
But I'm not ruling any thing out either.
🎷
2
@Robert Cohen
I am thoroughly confused on the subject of diet and its impact on immunity and resilience. The environment that creates favorable conditions for the growth of this pathogen, isn't evident according to recent studies. There is too much confusion surrounding this subject.
My neighbor recently died of a hospital infection from a simple hernia repair. I wonder what the pathogen was? So frightening that hospitals deem it necessary to keep this secret. How is that even legal when restaurants are graded?
13
Lesser candida infections have been rampant for many years now. The sugar-filled Western diet has made us prime targets for those and other yeasts. My natural health-obsessed friends were warning me about this 10 years ago, and it seems their fears were well justified. It's pretty scary to see such predictions coming to fruition in such a deadly way.
8
The pharmaceutical industy's walk away from the problem of drug resistant bugs (and apparently, also fungi) has been well documented ... and is frightening. Under our capitalistic drug pipeline system, not enough return on the investment and research ends and, therefore, no product/no drug.
I wonder if government might find the resources [irony] and the WILL to 'socialize' the tackle of this problem, or if millions and millions and millions must first die? I suspect the answer is the later.
Problem number 1: Why is it we are so much better at and more interested in making new things to kill people than instead...Saving Lives?
5
It is a hard sell to develop entirely new classes of antibiotics that none is allowed to use except as a last resort. And then someone will copy it and feed it to cows or to treat the common cold...
In Sweden we’ve been quite safe since we’ve practiced rigorous prescription discipline - but with more frequent travelling we’re unfortunately beginning to import diseases from less “disciplined” areas.
7
@Think
Could it be that one is not believed when these claims are made that the organism originates from the host's own physiognomy?
Consider that the room of the poor man who succumbed to this fungus even had this strain on the ceiling. Then consider the typical practice of two patients to a room. Why are we not building and remodeling hospitals into smaller private rooms when we know the risk of infection?
8
@Joanne
Most likely because it is nearly impossible for the pathogen to recognize this and other strains of naturally occuring yeast while these have overgrown the digestive tract and or other parts of the body. I understand the yeasts release some sort of chemical that acts to block recognition by the immune system, which explains its predatory nature as a disease-causing organism. There is definitely the sense that certain chemical might play a role in enhancing this process.
Some kids are on LONG TERM (like 2 years) antifungals for so-called "candida" infections diagnosed by their "naturopath." Look into how many children with autism or other developmental disorders get put on antifungals by naturopaths. Too many. Candida occurs naturally in the human gut. Other people are on long term home-administered IV antibiotics for Lyme disease, also diagnosed by naturopaths even though infectious disease specialists say it's not Lyme disease. These treatments are completely irresponsible and dangerous.
11
This article calls loudly for organic foods. Food commodity prices have declined steadily since the 1970s. It is reckless to feed antibiotics to livestock and fish and to spray fungicides on crops to increase yields. We are at a public health inflection point to ban these practices. Higher food costs must be accepted to prevent any more drug resistant pathogens from proliferating.
Our tax system is upside down. Labor income is taxed at a higher rate than investment income. Corporate taxes are at a historical low. The complaint of double taxation on investment income rings hollow since the investor is performing no work. Yes, he is assuming investment risk but a diverse portfolio of a dozen stocks mitigates that risk.
Higher food prices would affect the working poor who pay 7.5% in payroll taxes. This can be solved through a combination of a higher threshold for income tax to kick in and reduced social security and Medicare tax rates.
6
@Joel Ii
I feel the same about this presentation. It is aptly put. The risk is displaced by a broad spectrum of areas fit for exploration and development.
2
Gee unlike the other commentors, I have a different perspective.
Due to the ACA, and the method by which someone can have health insurance in California, I've been stuck ongoing to in-hospital clinics.
Everytime I do so, I become unwell for about several weeks.
Scheduled for a mamogram, I was sent to a private 3rd party radiological service.
There at my appointment, were more than 30 people in the waiting room, with less than 25 seats. The persons there were newcomers to the State, and maybe the country. They brought it seemed, as many family members as possible, children, grandmothers, sisters, husbands, and uncles.
When one child started to roll around a waiting room "coffee table", I had had it.
Those individuals are probably germ free. But there is a ton of ignorance about microbes, and pathogenic microbes. You don't bring your family to a doctor's appointment!
That stated the real carriers are people without regular housing. In LA, there are documented cases of TB, and typhus, and other contagious diseases spread by the flees of the animal companions of the persons without housing.
My thinking is that we have to cut through the manure of cultural barriers and make demands, on newcomers, and persons without housing, and urban areas to educate these individuals and to provided housing, or the entire populace will suffer, including those who provide health care and the police.
6
@RR
As the son of an immigrant to NYC in the 1980's, I can attest to the fact that these perceptions of microbial science are somewhat affected by our collective perception of germ science and how we are conditioned to think contamination is the only way to contract an infectious disease.
At times, our very own antibodies can turn against us, and cause neural pathways to misfire, resulting in all manner of chronic disease including MS and Lupus, to name only 2 instances of this phenomenon.
It is the projection of hormones in the subject that creates a given immune response, not the perception of the subject of these systems in movement. Thank you for the chance to discuss this fascinating subject with you here on the NYT. It is most enlightening.
4
I have had bronchitis for about a month. Because of how busy I have been with travel for work I decided to go to Urgent Care. I could go to see a doctor if I wanted to, I have the time and my employer allows me the time when I am sick no questions asked. But I wanted convenience. I went to Urgent Care twice, and twice the nurse practitioner prescribed antibiotics for what she thought was viral bronchitis. I wondered why given it wasn't a bacterial infection and she said, she was worried about me getting pneumonia. Three weeks after that I just went to an actual physician and he said that I did not need the antibiotics because I was not displaying symptoms that would require me to take additional precautions. He did not prescribed antibiotics, just a steroid. Every time I go to that Urgent Care I get prescribed antibiotics. Guess I will skip convenience from now on and just go see my physician.
15
A proper explanation is in order for proper procedure in developing an antibody test that correlates to trials that result from exposure to healing agents within the peripheral circulatory system.
1
My kid's immune system was plausibly decimated by reckless antibiotic Rx for what were allergy-related comps. Medicine is in of itself a life form model that needs very careful monitoring or it can devastate our larger scale health ecosystems. Who's in charge? We need heroes...& I am and we should all be thankful for the smartest among because it's all so very serious.
2
@former MA teacher
However interesting this might seem to you as a line of exploration, I digress when I tell you that it isn't necessarily a given that every organism known to mankind, including pathogens, has its rightful place on the evolutionary scale chart.
@Raj Singh
Sharp response. In which context(s) do you mean, "the evolutionary scale chart"? Are you speaking of issues of Darwin and medicine? Darwinian medicine? Of course medicine can't be the ultimate panacea of panaceas, but is shouldn't do harm...
1
In 2014, The New Yorker and The Atlantic reported on a fungal epidemic in the southwest caused by overdevelopment that stirs up and spreads dormant fungal spores.
Coccidioides immitis is very virulent. A Michigan man went to Phoenix to buy a used car. The microscopic spores trapped in the ventilation system were sufficient to infect him.
3
@Joel Ii
Yes I caught that in the article itself, however the immune deficiency also causes other deficiencies. Most notable the depletion of one's energy and focus. Why anyone would want to live that way while it is possible through the most basic hygiene skills to address the issue, completely evades me. I cannot accept it.
You can't make this stuff up! The methods of current diagnosis are not properly thought out and the amount of effort going into it are beyond my reckoning. The reality is there is a dual sphere of antibodies- one with prominent mutagenic factors, and another subclass that are eliminated through the digestive tract. How that comes about is still a mystery to most immunologists, and until we see some self-evident method of testing this in laboratories, we can't push past the barrier formed by white blood cells in our waste materials.
1
Our four kids have never been prescribed antibiotics. They did run the gamut of all manner of childhood illnesses, but guess what? Kids recover without antibiotics (but with lots of fluids, rest, and hugs). Kids aren't even in the top 10 of antibiotic consumers, anyway.
As a vegan family, we do not contribute to the overuse of antibiotics in livestock. I didn't even know until today about the anti-fungals that have been used with crops, so we are probably complicit in that.
So, here's the question: what can we, human readers of the NYTimes, do to solve this??? Obviously: giving up a little bit or a lot of meat.
Fellow humans: meat is bad for us, but it's much worse for the cows and pigs and turkeys whose flesh we take from them brutally without their consent.
16
@Carrie Not all kids get better without antibiotics. Many in the past just simply died from infections. Antibiotics are very effective but need to be used with care. In the past, we have relied on the judgement of our physicians and practitioners to prescribe when necessary, but now we as medical consumers, must take a much more active role ourselves. This is long past due. Also eating meat or not is not the answer to this problem. Apparently eating vegetables and fruits is also a problem since they are treated with antifungals. So we all eat organic - but not all of us can afford that or have access to it. We don't have the answer yet, but we should resist boiling the problem down to an ultra-simplistic level - like, just give up meat and all will be well.
12
@Carrie
B12, K2, D3, Folic Acid, a form of Vitamin A that Humans can use.....
All of the above and more are missing from a vegan diet.
There is nothing nutritionally nor morally wrong with eating meat. I fact, you are doing yourselves and your children an enormous disservice.
~A Yogi
1
This will sort itself out. There will be a pandemic of some size eventually and then the general public will sit up and take notice. Once that happens there will be scope for reform. In fact, maybe experts could make better use of their time by drafting a post-emergency plan instead of issuing warnings that almost no one pays attention to.
In the meantime it is not so serious. If you're (relatively) young and healthy, Candida or the other bugs won't get you; just babies and old people. For the antibiotic industry - business as usual.
5
There's a lot of talk nowadays about deregulation. Its good for the economy, right? This article, pointing to the mind-blowing use of antibiotics in farming, is a good example of why industry needs regulating, because it. does. not. regulate. itself.
Here are a few other examples in which industry continued to use materials they knew were deadly or toxic: Asbestos in homes; Lead in homes; Cigarettes everywhere; BGH in milk; Antimony, barium, bromine, cadmium, chromium, lead, and selenium...all in children's toys.
This is why short-term financial gains can't govern our choices and why the Libertarian dream of unfettered free-markets just doesn't fly. By the time consequences roll around, the players have absconded, time and again.
25
I am so tired of hiring that prescribing too many anti-biotics is the reason for germs becoming drug resistant.
Here is the kicker: Germs are living organisms like humans and like humans they will evolve regardless of anti-biotics. Germs were here before anti-biotics and will continue to be in this world long after we are gone.
This is why germs will always be with us no matter how many times zealous doctors says excessive anti-biotics are the reason. Even if we don't prescribe anti-biotics, germs will then evolve against our own biological defense anyway.
1
Mrpisces, this is simply not true. There is a difference between evolution under pressure and not.
15
@mrpisces
Tired? Strange. This is not in doubt. This is not a theory.
@mrpisces
Sounds like alternative thinking. Or is there science to support your thesis?
1
My friends wife just had a hysterectomy because of an endometrial carcinoma. She was sent home after several days due to surgical complications and without anti biotics. She was told if she wound up with a fever over 100.4 to go to the emergency room.
I don't know what actuarial savant came up with this idea playing the odds the world would be better off with her getting an infection than her getting a series of antibiotics.
Doesn't the patient count? This poor woman was going through the pain of surgery and recovery. The period waiting for her lab results to tell her how advanced the cancer was. She also had to wait and see if she got an infection which would have resulted in a rushed visit the emergency room because anti biotics have been deemed to dangerous? Couldn't this extra worry been alleviated by a simple prescription.
4
@JoeG I am sorry for what you went through, but antibiotics aren’t prescribed in case of infection. Telling someone to be seen if they develop a post operative fever is a standard discharge instruction. If everyone got “just in case” antibiotics after surgery, our world would be full of hyper resistant superbugs moreso than this article already suggests.
8
Yes but it would have not been good medicine to use a broad spectrum antibiotic for a person who MIGHT get an infection.
1
Ten million people is a blip. The world's population has been exploding since WW2 thanks to vaccines, better nutrition, etc. We reap what we sow.
6
Many things became extinct on earth before, dinosaurs before us, as big as they were. Is this how we are going to be extinct, by a superbug called Candida auris????
1
Jim Humble could turn out to be our hero after all. That is, if he lives to get the recognition he deserves.
1
Are fungicides sprayed on organic crops?
1
@Liz- CA -- Yes, organic fungicides such as Serenade, Actinovate and Regalia. There are also copper-based sprays applied during the dormant months on fruit trees to control fire blight.
Both Serenade and Actinovate are beneficial bacteria that eat the fungus and Regalia is a hormone derived from Japanese Knotweed, a plant that is extremely tenacious. Regalia strengthens the plant's immune system to resist mold and mildew.
There are other organic applications, one is potassium bicarbonate that raises the ph to intolerable levels for powdery mildew and kills it outright. Surely C. auris wouldn't mind this one bit if it survives bleach and hydrogen peroxide.
Maybe the bacteria in Actinovate and Serenade would eat up C. auris -- the bacteria are harmless to humans.
12
@Liz- CA
The quick answer is yes. There is a rather large list of crop treatments permissible for organics.
You can google about pretty easily.
3
@Liz- CA
Every organic matter, vegetables and coffee are sprayed with "pesticides". If you travel to any State or Perhaps the US Deparatment of Agriculture, you'll find that insecticides include
insecticides
fungacides
herbacides
All spices, everything that starts out as an agricultural product is sprayed prior to coming into the U.S.
There are coffee exceptions, but that does not include "organic" coffee beans. In fact, during the roasting process, many insect parts are in the bean mixture.
I could go on.
If you buy organic products raised in the U.S. most of them, not all, are better but not pesticideless.
If you wish to investigate, interview organic farmers. And if you can since you live in California, travel to a farm and just talk with the farmer there.
1
This article reminds me of the articles written about AIDS in the early 1980’’s, before it really even had a name. Ronald Reagan was ignoring the problem. The Times was reporting it. Fear and ignorance and prejudice ruled. We are traveling back in time, with a mystifying disease with no cure and no political will to combat. We already have a health care system in ruins. I tremble at the thought of the victims who will now be mercilessly be scapegoated in place of rationally finding a solution to the problem confronting our population. I have lived through and lost people to one plague. This article brings me back to its beginning.
14
@Susan Gloria
I don't mean to be a know it all, but by April 1980, almost thirty nine years ago, AIDs emerged in San Francisco, California and it was widely reported as a disease and a cancer which afflicted men who were gay. The disease had been active for two years prior in SF, but the deaths did not manifest until 1980. Men died shortly after seeing their doctors. And as I recall, it was being seriously examined.
1
In the current medical mania to kill all germs, many helpful microbes are being eliminated.
We have a microbiome and it requires a delicate balance of many microorganisms.
If we destroy them, we die.
No antibiotic will ever make a difference if the entire system is unable to balance itself.
Caveat emptor.
6
Ironically, we have the regenerative agriculture techniques needed to increase production of crops without these kinds of fungicides. But since no one is going to get rich off of these techniques, which are even better known in places like Canada and Africa, farmer-to-farmer programs to teach these techniques in the U.S. are underfunded. Good thing the billionaires are all in a race to have the biggest rocket!
13
While I appreciate reading NYT stories on public health, this article takes on an unnecessary conspiracy theory tone that makes me question the authors' understanding of the material. CDC does not hide outbreaks. You can read about outbreaks like C. auris in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (yes, its published weekly!) This link is to a 2017 article on C. auris which describes the outbreak, the states impacted, number of cases per state and infection control practices to limit the spread: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6619a7.htm
CDC never describes individual hospitals or businesses impacted by an outbreak to protect the confidentiality of those involved but usually gives a thorough description of the situation so clinicians and public health workers can be prepared in local jurisdictions for similar situations or cases.
BTW, fungal infections have always been difficult to treat. There are only a few medications, some of which are difficult to tolerate, especially by the medically fragile people who are susceptible to fungal infections.
The authors do a nice job highlighting how the over-use of fungicides contribute to the problem of drug-resistant organisms.
23
Hi, Jean. We must have read different stories. The one on my screen says nothing about the CDC hiding anything. On my screen I see "Officials in London did alert the C.D.C. to the Royal Brompton outbreak while it was occurring. And the C.D.C. realized it needed to get the word to American hospitals. On June 24, 2016, the C.D.C. blasted a nationwide warning to hospitals and medical groups . . ."
1
@Jean
There was some famous person who just died, and the cause was a fungal infection.
You have to agree that hospitals do not publish what diseases and traumas they are treating.
There is an epidemic of meth amphetamine abuse/traumatic accident/car collisions in many Counties of wealth, but you will not hear of it.
1
It’s all connected: the environment, our gut and personal microbiomes, and the chemicals released into our ecosystem.
As others have stated - corporate interests exercise outsized influence on decision makers on Capitol Hill. Career politicians balk at AOC for the Green New Deal, yet such radical policy proposals are the only way we can holistically address social icebergs that pose a clear and present danger.
This article underscores externalities that arise from a post-Citizens United world. If we don’t speak up as a community, this is just the beginning. We’re in deep yogurt.
13
Many microbes are naturally resistant to all the antibiotics we currently have. It sounds like C auris is one of them. It is very different from a situation where a microbe becomes resistant because of antibiotic use in the hospital. It is not clear to me why hospitals would be held responsible for organism that they cannot treat. They are responsible to provide the best care and to make sure it does not spread, which sounds like they do according to this article. In addition, as stated, if C auris infects people that are immunocompromised, why would “new comers coming for an elective surgery” care about it? I am not so sure where the secret is?
1
Disturbing how the elite class prioritize their businesses over the lives of the rest of us. Boeing hiding unsafe airplanes, hospitals hiding new epidemics, oil companies hiding climate science. Money over human lives. Vote for change. Letting businesses regulate themselves and governments too small to protect it citizens does not seem to be working for 99% of us.
14
So many articles saying there is no point in paying extra for organic produce. Buying conventional produce is propelling this epidemic of fungicide resistance.
6
@ELS- several of the same fungicides, such as copper compounds, are used in organic farming and are deemed perfectly "natural." So no, organic produce is still not an answer here.
7
@ELS if you check out my prior comment, I erred but the gist is
all produce, spices, coffee beans, and anything organic which imported into the US has to be fumigated with pesticides - and that includes
insecticides,
herbicides,
and fungacides.
Here in the U.S. I can't tell one way or another about pesticide free produce, but I do know that the ground has pesticides, and so though many things like apples are grown without pesticides, the trees themselves are exposed to soil with pesticides.
Have you noticed that most of California's grocery stores carry produce from Mexico, Chile, Honduras, and other central American countries? They don't have a USDA like government agency which tests for pesticide levels.
@laguna greg -- There are popular organic fungicides that are beneficial bacteria that eat the fungus. They eat it for lunch. C. auris can be eaten, it's not like it tastes bad.
Fungal infections tend to occur in the immunocompromised individual. Is the problem with the organism or the vessel? Perhaps it is better to stay away from all of the biological treatments for nonfatal illnesses rather than suppress your immune system to the point that you die from an infection that would not get started in a healthy body.
Too many antibiotics obviously are going to give resistant organisms, but the reverse, too many treatments that reduce immunity, may be the more important point.
4
Just because an illness is "non-fatal" doesn't mean it won't cause a lifetime of suffering. I suggest you try spending a month of your life with Lupus or Rheumatoid Arthritis and see how you fare. Besides which, these infections usually occur in patients who are immunosuppressed after solid organ or bone-marrow transplantation. There's no way to avoid immunosuppressive therapy in those individuals.
5
@kirk- the people who need immunosuppresant therapies need them because they will die if they don't have them. Not a good idea to avoid. Some people suffer from immune deficiencies because of genetics or disease, so there's "avoiding" is not possible.
4
In 10 years time, how many of us reading this will have died due to this very situation? How many of our loved ones will have died? This should be enough to light a fire to increase the odds that we can change "the system". We must reclaim the power of society, and slay the myth of the individual.
Either greed and hubris will combine to prove that our species, like so many others, is on the endangered list... or community and compassion will sow the seeds of societal change.
8
@Footprint.... So far it would seem that 587 people in the U.S. have acquired the infection in the last 5 years. Devastating for those who became ill, but not exactly a pandemic.
2
@Footprint
"slay the myth of the individual"
That your worldview leads you to believe that the infection is somehow attributable to individual rights makes for a fun experiment:
Will you change your priors when you learn that the strains at issue in fact originated in Southern Asian (Pakistan, India) and South American (Venezuela) countries notorious for their lack of respect for the rights of individuals?
When theory produces a prediction that gets things exactly backwards (as here, where none of the four areas in which this disease emerged are individualistic), that's traditionally taken as tending to disconfirm said theory; but will it?
"At present, C. auris is separated into four geographic clades: the South Asian, South African, South American, and East Asian clades. In India, clonal isolates have been detected over very widespread geographic regions. Within each geographic clade, however, there are minimal genetic differences. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of U.S. isolates indicated two geographic clades: the South Asian clade, and the South American clade."
https://cmr.asm.org/content/31/1/e00029-17
I have family members in the medical profession; some of them with young families. This frightening fungus, now added to superbug bacteria, is a terrible risk to the medical staffing professions. We need to get a handle on what we're doing to our food sources with these chemicals that now are affecting the wider environment.
9
@mother of two
True. My point made that as well. It is clear that the hospital environment is biologically dangerous.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve disrespected the earth and science for many years. The consequences are upon us. Expect more of this.
16
Who knew that when HG Wells wrote "The War of the Worlds", the Martians were really us?
We've been decimating our earth for centuries, always thinking we were in control, all the while we were just hastening our demise with pesticides, herbicides and antibiotics. We'd show those lower forms of life whose boss!
Well, it looks like Mother Nature is going to get the last laugh. Unless we learn to live with nature, not against it, the rise of the "superbugs" can only get worse.
Either that or climate change....
20
I recently went to an Urgent Care for a cold, with a baby in daycare my husband and I are sick a lot, and I knew there was a slim chance of walking out with an antibiotic.
Instead they listened, were sympathetic, and gave me a prescription cough suppressant. They educated me on how long the virus would last. It was a $45 dollar co pay but not wasted at all. I’m glad my health care providers are being smart. God help us with the overuse of antibiotics.
10
Woo-hoo NZ is safe. We are not on the map so the bug won't find us.
3
@Tony Merriman
It's already there, and has been so for uncounted years.
4
Another bi-product of the corporate corruption we are now steeped in. Anti-fungals on crops the problem? Then stop doing it! Pass legislation to encourage small organic farms and give some young people a dream to look forward to. Stop subsidizing mega corporations who have no concern for health, safety or the American Way.
11
@Heather B
I've never really read the comments on an NYT article before this one, and I have to say, it's a trip.
What article were you folks reading so as to be under the misapprehension that C. auris is in any way the product of US agriculture or US corporations? Is this just a knee-jerk 'see bad thing -> blame big business' reflex?
It came to the US from Southern Asia and South America. That is, the problematic policies and practices are not those of American farms, but those of foreign farms. We have just allowed the contagious consequences of their irresponsibility to cross our borders.
As chairman of the raw milk institute, we have seen this coming for years.
There is reason that biodiversity in the gut and earth biome is critical. Biodiversity only exists when the conditions permit biodiversity. The standard American Diet is gut biome destructive. Antibiotics kill off biodiversity and bacteria itself and strongly support yeast grow. Add sugar and you have a devils brew for immune depression and a welcome mat for pathogens.
Raw milk drinkers have strong immune systems and rarely get sick. Ever wonder why? Raw milk is a complete food with the nutrition to feed bacteria and the biodiversity itself. Breast milk is super immune food. It is the first food of life and builds immunity for its role in life.
Ever wonder why the Eastern European people’s and those that eat raw cheese ( French paradox) do so well.
It’s our food !!! It’s our antibiotics plus our food.
Eat whole unprocessed foods and feed your gut biome. Build strong immunity.
Read up on the human genome. Epigenics.
Doctors have failed to progress with science. They must read the latest Pubmed Gut Biome studies or we are all doomed. Feed the gut biome and build strong immunity and thrive. Kill off the gut and die.
Bacteria run life on earth. We are run by bacteria’s Genomics!!! Kill off bacteria and we become autoimmune messes or we die.
Be kind to bacteria... they are most of us genomically. Feed them nourish them. Then we thrive.
5
Raw milk was the source of many bacterial diseases in history that resulted in Louis Pasteur to invent pasteurization. Tuberculosis bovis from raw milk was one such infection, a more common infection from raw milk is Listeriosis, and the list goes on and on.
9
@bilo -- Meanwhile life goes on for the 99% of those who consume raw milk products and live much healthier lives. I can't remember when I've heard of someone getting sick of raw milk products. My family drank raw goat milk for 10 years.
Meanwhile, bilo, people are eating poison in the form of highly processed food-like substances and hundreds of millions are made sick by it, die by it, and yet for some reason you give it a free pass. What is that reason? I bet it's that the hegemony of corporate advertising has a death grip on you.
Question for specialists:
It is true that in very poor countries where children live, let's say, in not so clean homes (if they have them) and have not our "perfect" hygiene, there are not cases of infantile leukemia?
Proof that their immune system is very strong.
1
@Lea-there is no evidence to show that might be the case.
3
There’s definitely evidence that when I was in grammar school I didn’t know a single kid with nut allergies, gluten intolerance or the danger of dying by a single bee sting. Then again, we made mud pies, ate snow and rolled in the grass all summer long.
1
Eat, drink and be merry.
Very merry indeed.
For tomorrow we all die,
needlessly, well before our time is due.
If global warming does not get us or our grandchildren, unleased fungal and rampant bacterial infections apparently will.
Our unfortunate grandchildren will curse us in our graves, and rightly so, for the sad and dangerous world we will pass on to them.
However in the midst of all this gloom and doom it’s so comforting to know that Trump and his lobbyist friends in government are tackling all this in Washington on our behalf. Not.
6
Time to re-read Albert Camus' "Plague" for future possibilities.
6
Hardly the point of that novel.
1
Just goes to prove an old axiom. “ What you oppose, you also empower!”
4
Since when is a fungus a germ?
1
A germ is "a micro-organism, especially one that causes disease." There any number of small fungi that qualify.
9
“Germ” is not a term used by biologists.
3
Someone had better tell that to the NIH....
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3035911/
5
"Germ" is an informal term for microscopic disease-causing organisms that is in wide use throughout the English-speaking world (and beyond). Don't let it bother you.
4
@Newton
“Germ” is not a term used by biologists......
Yeah, well I use it to describe one of my sisters. So, there's that.
7
Plasmids abound!
2
As my grandfather told me, "if your political positions can't be changed by new evidence, then they aren't your opinions, they're your religion."
I think mine might be due for a revision.
The article mentioned that C. auris seems to have evolved in four different places in the same time. Those places are South Asia, Southern Africa, South America, and East Asia. The US cases have all been from the South Asian and South American strains. (See source below).
South Asian and South American origins are hardly unique to C. auris among infectious diseases, as tropical climates are ideal for their rapid preproduction and evolution.
As various other commenters have noted, a large proportion of the US population is vulnerable to this and other drug-resistant diseases that prey on weakened immune systems, and such diseases are an immanent threat to public health & safety.
If finding out that deadly, easily transmitted, drug-resistant contagion is being brought to the US from South and Central America is not the sort of new evidence that ought to prompt some soul searching on border security issues, I honestly don't know what would be.
I found that this is not a one-of, and areas with tropical climates, such as South and Central America, are of consistent concern in this regard.
My position has changed: Secure the Southern border. Immediately.
https://cmr.asm.org/content/31/1/e00029-17
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK99566/
https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/global/index.html
3
Which would do nothing to stop people from flying in. Closing a door while leaving the windows open doesn’t do much for security.
14
>>> "My position has changed: Secure the Southern border. Immediately."
Do you also want to ban travelers from the tropics, together with all imports from those parts of the world? Or do you imagine that resistant organisms travel exclusively with refugees?
12
@Bill Seng
Customs processes could easily be modified to allow for improved disease detection for arrivals from contagion carrying countries.
Simply ensuring that all of our arrivals go through security of some kind is a significant step up.
1
If I understand this correctly, if the azoles pesticides are responsible for the emergence of C. auris, there are two immediate conclusions that come to mind:
1. stop using the azoles pesticides, ban its production world wide.
2. if the fungi that azoles kills is what kept this evidently ancient fungus C. auris at bay in the wild, it may be the way to knock C. auris back down.
Beyond that, and in conjunction with consideration of our existential crisis that global climate change is creating:
3. grow, buy and consume organic food only.
4. Aggressively promote birth control and the ethical obligation we all have to not keep reproducing at unsustainable rates. Part of the reason industrial agriculture is so horrible is that there are far too many people on the planet who need to eat, and our chemically enhanced food production is critical to feed our hungry, overpopulated world. At this point it is unethical for anyone to have more than two children (I have none), and we should say that without fear of retribution from those who thinks its anyone's right to have as many children as they want.
5. Rethink our collective practice of traveling so much. Air traffic is responsible for something like 10% of the emissions that are causing global warming, and it is the vector for the spread of disease and invasive critters.
And finally, when are we going to compel the profit makers and service providers of the world to come clean immediately when such a threat emerges?
12
@Jane
1. Who, exactly, do you think has the power to impose such a ban?
International orgs & western govts have spent the better part of 100 years attempting to ban needlessly cruel chemical and bio weapons, and have failed (see e.g. Syria). But you think developing countries will agree to abandon something that increases food yield?
2. That's purely speculative, and were it that easy I imagine an expert might have mentioned it.
3. Organic food producers use fungicide. See the National Organic Programs list of approved synthetic substances here: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=9874504b6f1025eb0e6b67cadf9d3b40&rgn=div6&view=text&node=7:3.1.1.9.32.7&idno=7#se7.3.205_1601
"Organic" is a marketing gimmick to get affluent, health-conscious people to pay more for food products.
4. "We" are not producing at unsustainable rates. "We" (literate people in developed countries) are not even reproducing at *replacement* rates.
Population is driven exclusively by people in the third world. Arguments about an ethical obligation to the planet are unlikely to prevail among people whose ethical obligations to feed their children don't restrain them even after they've bred themselves into a Malthusian state.
5. okay that's a good point.
I agree that the UK's National Health Service should have disclosed this. But they're government bureaucrats, not "profit makers."
2
@J. L. Cannon. I can't say I agree with the disparaging implications of "people whose ethical obligations to feed their children don't restrain them even after they've bred themselves into a Malthusian state." I'd assume that a culture's birth rate is controlled by social norms, economic and environmental realities, availability of contraception and abortion, etc., not by ethical shortcomings, as one would be likely to infer from your comment. These factors might be amenable to change.
3
This makes way too much sense for our government.
3
"In the United States, 587 cases of people having contracted C. auris have been reported, concentrated with 309 in New York, 104 in New Jersey and 144 in Illinois, according to the C.D.C."
I live in Chicago and the first I hear and read about Candida Auris is in the New York Times. Lovely.
Thank you NYT for this story. All of the hush hush over this terrifying infection reminds me of the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic was out of control, and yet, the secrecy surrounding that only seemed to compound the situation.
15
@Marge Keller
I don't think there was any secrecy at all about AIDs. Exactly 39 years ago, the newscasters of the San Francisco Bay Area, Dave McElhatton announced this new disease.
Prior to AIDs felling men left and right in SF, there was a mystery disease called, CHRONICA FATIGUE syndrome. We don't know what caused it. All sorts of people came down with it, and at that time a fungus was blammed "candida". Then more data identified the pathogene suspect as the "epstein barr" virus.
We know now about this incurable fungus.
We just have to be on our guard.
The key point is "immuno-compromised". If you are fit and healthy, this fungus is not likely to be a problem.
That's yet another reason to eat well, exercise, stop smoking, abstain or have alcohol only in moderation, and so on.
I figure that hospitals don't broadcast issues because they know people will panic, think the fungus will infect absolutely everybody, and avoid regular medical care.
Yes, we should be more like Europe and get away from over use of antibiotics, pesticides, hormones, etc.
But let's not exaggerate the risks to the general population!
4
The "general population" includes people who are immuno-compromised. They are our children, parents and siblings. They are people who take care of themselves and are not responsible for the unlucky fact that they have diseases.
3
@Heather- don't count your chickens. That's what they said about AIDS until it wasn't anymore, and even straight people could get it and do.
2
@West coast- just give it enough time and even healthy people will die of it.
Thank you, New York Times, really thank you. This beats even Snowden's 'they-record-everything-about-the-entire-globe' in gravity.
It is clear that 'they' (the ones with the money and the power) were planning to go on with business as usual, behind our backs. Congress, and POTUS must have been informed about this, yet they adamantly reject the New Green Deal. It's obscene.
Also obscene is keeping us in the dark. The one percenters, anybody who's somebody must have been informed about this, given the level of threat.
Thank you. I've never been more grateful to a newspaper in my entire life.
8
@Lali I cannot agree more. This article is the most important of the year, .....make that decade so far.
3
I wholeheartedly agree. Kudos to NYT
“Everything was positive — the walls, bed, doors, curtains, phones, sink, whiteboard, poles, pump,” “The mattress, bed rails, canister holes, window shades, ceiling, everything in the room was positive.” said Dr. Scott Lorin.
We are supposed to feel safe in a place of healing, only to discover that it's as contaminated as the patient.
I predict that this sort of incident will spawn ideas for new hospital designs that find ways to reduce the number of hard surfaces in rooms in order to make it easier to clean and reduce contamination.
I was just visiting a dear friend diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. Just looking around the hospital room what struck me was how cluttered the room was.
In addition to Dr. Lorin's list of items, there were extra chairs, linen baskets, rolling tables, oxygen lines going from the wall to the patient, monitor machine cords, lines from the hanging bags of fluids, it's a cluster in there.
6
It’s extremely difficult for personal to use correct isolation techniques, especially nurses, when they have multiple patients to care for at the same time. This is not a excuse for poor technique but a reality.
5
@Susan
Thank you Susan.
I agree with you. The environment in which hospital staff must work presents all sorts of obstacles that thwart 'good technique.'
The environment and systems need to change. The number of nurses per patient needs to be increased in order that nurses can actually do the work their patients need.
3
We live in an interdependent world of micro and macro organisms competing for survival relentlessly feeding off one another creating winners and losers in both short term and long with extinction as end game. Man is a relative newcomer and will survive or not depending on the adversary and adaptation.
Fear and alarmist headlines, however, benefit no one and bring no solutions. Rather than toss out anti-fungal pesticides and fertilizers as causation for new super bacterial, stop pointing fingers at man and modernity as the culprit. This is an opportunity for facts, and unadulterated science to make headway and not politically correct fiction and finger pointing. If you are not part of the solution, silence is golden.
2
@Grant-
1- keep your Malthusian cynicism to yourself, and
2- the evidence already shows a link to modern farming habits and the genesis of the problem. So yes, we're going to blame "Modernity" way ahead of you. Sell your stock now.
4
@laguna greg -- Really. The only solution is if we're all part of the solution. People like Ol' Mr. Grant think we're just a herd with no agency and need to be told to line up to slaughter, jobs or shopping and trot back to our sheds. I'll take information over ignorance any day.
Hey greg...ever worked on a farm? Or is this just another Trump brag about pouring dry-wall?
It seems like we find a solution to fix a problem and it goes well for awhile but something worse seems to come about because of the fix. It’s difficult to foresee the unintended consequences of things. I agree that we should use less antibiotics and anti fungals but that’s before I get sick and want relief and at that time I’m not very concerned about the macro consequences of the use of these things. It’s similar with global warming, I know that we need to put less carbon in the atmosphere but I’m still going to fly out on vacation, use a car and electricity etc. I guess we have to do what we can but realistically there are consequences for having so many people in the world especially ones that are living a modern lifestyle.
4
@Timothy Phillips
Antibiotics are life saving.
We in the West do not take them properly. And we do not dispose of them properly.
We're not making new bugs with our bodies, we're making superbugs in our soil, where our garbage and recycled human waste goes.
1
In order for it to become profitable for pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs to fight these kinds of infections there has to be market for the drug. If one considers the fact that drug resistance is an inevitability, which it is, then our current market-based drug discovery system constitutes a sick and perverse resource allocation mechanism whereby X number of people have to die in order for it to become profitable to develop a drug. In order to avoid this, it should be the role of government to allocate resources to these companies, as well as our public health departments and universities, so that we stay ahead of infections not behind them. The world is getting smaller as it inexorably adds more people. These types of stories about new infectious agents are only going to become more common.
4
@C. M. Jones
Governmental central planning of R&D is a great idea if and only if your goal is maximizing the number of people that die of preventable disease.
I honestly wonder what in the world gave you the idea that government bureaucracies are able to "stay ahead" of anything whatsoever. Regulatory agencies are, without exception, completely incapable of keeping up with private sector innovation.
Your conception of how R&D is approached is backwards as well. No one waits for a set number of people to die. You invest in R&D when it looks like there will be enough demand for it that it's worthwhile to develop. No company passes up a viable opportunity to capture an emerging market because they're waiting for more people to die. (When people are dead, they don't buy medications, now do they? Companies like to keep consumers alive, when reasonably possible.)
1
I see your point about how the free market does such a superb job of coming up with new antibiotics and fungicides, seeing how we have so many new ones to choose from. As someone who earned a Ph.D. in microbiology partly for identifying a drug target in a deadly bacterium, I know for a fact that no drug company on the planet would have ever discovered what I discovered, simply because they had no reason to study the system I was studying. That is what government funded basic science allows you to do. Staying ahead means constantly identifying new targets, coming up with new drugs based on those targets, work that is by definition not-profitable.
Also, how many pharmaceutical companies at this very moment are firing up their drug screens against C. auris since this article was published? Kinda proves my point that X number of people have to die in order for them to make a move.
4
Fungal infections are the most concerning. Heat, Bleach and Phage can be used against bacteria, but fungus is different and difficult. "Some scientists cite evidence that rampant use of fungicides on crops is contributing to the surge in drug-resistant fungi infecting humans." This is an important and inflammatory premise and needs substantiation. Please provide evidence based citation for this statement. It may be association like autism and vaccines and not cause and effect, so please please please provide scientific evidence.
"hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs". They are infection hubs. The best way to combat infectious disease is through vaccination.
>>> "This is an important and inflammatory premise and needs substantiation. Please provide evidence based citation for this statement."
Start here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5052333/
3
@James- it's just part and parcel of what has been happening in modern farming and the increasing prevalence of VRSA and MRSA. The facts in that case are well established.
1
@James
Oh. About killing fungus or mold. Bleach is tricky. Too much bleach causes the spores to basically hole up. The best way to kill fungus is with oxygen and sunlight.
Hypochloride and phenol are the only bactericides used in genetic engineering I know of and that happens because these chemicals lyse or snip the macromolecules in bacteria or viruses/virods.
Fungus is different. It is a unicellular plant organism. You have to kill all of the spores at the same time, or it (fungi) will grow back.
This I can tell you:
I have been an ER doc for 25 years.
We have NEVER been sanctioned for prescribing antibiotics for patients that we KNEW did not need them.
Or for ordering expensive tests that we KNEW were unnecessary.
On the contrary. This malpractice is seen by hospital administration as good care. As being cautious. As being thorough.
As making MONEY for the hospital.
And god help us if we failed to do so.
27
Many decades ago your doctor was a trustworthy figure.
Then the pharmaceutical industry transformed a doctor in a cog in the big machine designed to make money.
Today any prescription rises the suspect that behind that amount of chemicals there are more money for CEOs and less benefits for your health. It's very disappointing.
10
More people should read Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains (2003). I helped me finally understand just how easy it is to breed multi-drug-resistant pathogens, how the development of such dangerous disease can happen within a person's body and how difficult it is to treat. I began teaching that narrative nonfiction many years ago. Partners In Health is the charity founded by Dr. Paul Farmer, who has been warning about this for a very long time.
13
It's absurd to think that we have an as-yet undefined e.coli outbreak already discussed by the CDC - https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2019/o103-04-19/index.html - yet there are protocols or agreements in place that prohibit it from talking about "hospital zero."
Exactly whose hen house is the CDC guarding?
When it comes to resistant infections, institutions shouldn't be immune from disclosure.
11
>>> "Exactly whose hen house is the CDC guarding?"
That's not what's happening. CDC doesn't have authority to compel state agencies to provide the relevant data, so it is forced to agree to state-imposed conditions to get them to share it.
Ask, rather, whose hen houses the *states* are guarding.
And, perhaps, ask Congress to require the states to provide the data without condition.
11
Remember that hospital in Dallas, a Press Ganey hospital, took its time about reporting the Ebola patient it failed to detect and treat?
1
That didn't happen. Texas Health Presbyterian missed the diagnosis on one day, but then made a correct diagnosis when the patient returned, two days later. The hospital spokespeople who held a press conference when (as soon as) the Ebola diagnosis was confirmed didn't know about the earlier ER visit.
And, just FYI, Press Ganey is a company that develops patient satisfaction surveys. It doesn't run hospitals.
10
@Douglas
You must have an interest in Press Ganey. Look them up and how they affect how hospitals are run with their patient satisfaction surveys. They get doctors fired and control patient management with those schemes they implement in hospitals. Look it up. They are a menace to the practice of sound medicine.
3
I want to wave this in the face of the people who don't believe in evolution even as evolution is killing them. They probably don't believe in global warming either.
13
The largest organism on the planet isn't a whale or a bear, it's fungus.
8
You can't really blame mother nature about doing everything within it's power to rid itself of the scourge of humans. We are the most destructive, lethal species.
19
Amen
Are Americans really so committed to ignorance as a way of life? To allow drug companies to advertise on T.V. is one of the dumber abuses of the freedom of expression. It may not be yelling fire in a crowded theater,but not the best use of our bandwidth. It starts at the top with our leaders
17
>>> "It may not be yelling fire in a crowded theater,but not the best use of our bandwidth."
Well, yes, but . . . do we really want to prohibit speech -- even commercial speech -- when it doesn't constitute "the best use of our bandwidth?"
Remember which road is said to be paved with good intentions.
@Douglas
Sometimes we do prohibit speech. Tobacco commercials.
5
How much are you willing to pay the individual or company that develops a cure for this disease?
1
More alarmist and irresponsible health care journalism. Good work!
1
@AK -- Said the Candida Auris appeaser.
6
Clearly you misunderstood what you read.
3
From an historical perspective, it appears to have the potential of becoming something like the 21st-century version of the plague.
4
The article says the illness hits people with compromised immune systems.
The reason they won't find a drug to rid the patients of the infections is that the drug doesn't fix low biological voltage which is what allows the fungus to take hold. EMFs from cell towers, WiFi, etc lower our biological voltage.
IOW, this is an EMF related problem. 5G will make the spread of these diseases much worse.
If this fungi were tamed there would be 10,000 more fungi different permeating everything ready to take its place. We need to change how we look at the world around us - it is full of microbes! In that sense, there is no space - only content. We can't see it but the air is full of microbes.
"The germ, a fungus called Candida auris, preys on people with weakened immune systems, and it is quietly spreading across the globe."
>>> "The reason they won't find a drug to rid the patients of the infections is that the drug doesn't fix low biological voltage which is what allows the fungus to take hold. EMFs from cell towers, WiFi, etc lower our biological voltage."
Lower our "biological voltage?" I probably shouldn't ask for an explanation.
6
@Douglas Yeah, our "low biological voltage" is caused by cell towers. It surprises me every time someone comes up with the needed scientific solution for a problem in a comments section! (Satire font, please.)
1
What, exactly, are you positing?
1
We should buy organic.
5
Good luck with this one, free market.
3
Well... we all will die of something. We engage in an endless race to avert death but we forget that it's the natural consequence of life. This article reads like Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night..." Man v. nature has an obvious victor.
Sure - we should fight it. But ultimately, nature will have its way.
3
That's why I let my children play in traffic. They're gonna die someday, why fight the inevitable?
8
@Sneeral
There is a distinct difference between attempting to prolong life at expiry and engaging in needless risk (e.g., your example of letting your children play on the highway). Think before you type.
@Sneeral
Incorrect analogy. Please review the last line of the post before engaging in needless sarcasm.
The New York Times is to be commended for placing this global health alert on the front cover, and not hidden in a less visited section of its news coverage.
Forwarded the above research article by Matt Richtel and Andrew Jacobs to an international health expert in London, knowledgeable in tropical diseases, and who has bounced back from malaria and dengue fever. 'Very depressing - make sure you only eat organic produce', and at first reading of Candida Auris, it is not necessary to spread panic among other acquaintances.
It is reminiscent of a terrifying novel authored by one of our most popular writers, and addresses the matter of survival. Little appears to be known about this virulent bacteria, and it might help to know more about the elderly patient who checked into the hospital a year ago in May.
While good bacteria is part of our system, experts might give advice on how to strengthen the above. 'Wonder Drugs' and 'Magic Pills', as the latter were called in the 50s have helped many of us weather infections and ills.
This is a note of appreciation to our scientists, our professionals in the medical field and nursing staff for their research and care in attempting to stamp out this bacteria war, and please keep us informed as to any safety measures and preventive ways that can be taken in the field of hygiene, sanitation and environment to protect those most at risk and vulnerable.
9
These little critters have no idea how powerful they are, such innocents. Far from understanding their present fame, they may not even know the strides they've made into the 21st Century.
I thought today when I first read this article that maybe I might know C. auris, like one may know other fungi. I'm no mycologist, but there are a few mushrooms and soil fungi that I'm rather fond of. And there are fungi I know by various means that are non-discursive, and it is in this realm that perhaps these creatures may be apparent, I thought.
To no avail, however, am I able to confirm or deny their presence quite yet, and I wonder if it's because of my habit of eating dirty organic food I and others not too farm from me have grown, or my habit of thinking cleanliness is overrated by people who don't have 'dirt pride.'
So it is possible that C. auris has been kept at bay, unwelcome by other bits of biota who have kind of bullied them into submission and hiding.
Oh, but what about all those fastidious city-dwellers who bathe themselves incessantly! So worried the filth of urban culture will clash with their urbanity, an irony only the culture knows that survives the washes, wipes and whiteners: C. auris will slowly grow upon this refinement.
Fame takes hold in cities far more than in rural areas, so maybe these creatures will come to be known well, and so too they will come to know themselves well, and by and by as their numbers grow they'll come to reach their full potential.
5
@Miss Ley
The hospitals might consider santizing their hospital gear with oxygen, and true UV light, as close as they can get.
I would put towels, sheets, doctor wear, and any material which is washed out into the sun for hours. Similarly with the beds, and any surface where a fungal spore colony can take hold and thrive - crevasses.
Bleach will only make the fungal spores hid away.
1
@RR,
Thank you for this recommendation, helpful to the medical profession and the Public at large. Will also be interested to hear what The World Health Organization releases on this global infectious threat, where this international agency issues daily bulletins covering the outbreak of cholera, ebola, measles and other ills.
Some of us were brought up on organic produce and ate whatever was on our plate. Snacks on the side were crab apples, horse bran, chicken feed and sea urchins.
Dating back to the 50s, America had a reputation of being sanitized and pasteurized by European standards. Based on what Chris has to add, it sounds as if this infection is not contained, the City Rich will be quarantined in the finest of conditions, while the rest of the populace will be placed in 'palaces of discomfort and distress'.
1
Human short sightedness triumphs again.
When I lived in India anyone with a cold could and did walk right up to a little pharmacy, even a thatched roof one in a small, small town and ask for and receive, without prescription, antibiotics.
But back in USA, even today, with all that is known, I meet people every day who have been prescribed antibiotics, sight unseen, over the phone, by their MD, for bladder infections that are actually non-infectious Interstitial Cystits, and for coughs with phlegm caused by Viruses....
Lets not even begin to discuss the insane overuse of hand sanitizers.....
8
I work in healthcare, Home health. I’ve seen this in a couple patients. Didn’t keep them in the hospital so we deal with it
3
While I am extremely grateful to the NYT for covering and reporting these kinds of noteworthy stories, my first instinct and reaction is always, "Oh great - something else to worry about."
4
Any man devised chemical that alters, destroys, degrades, or compromises a living cell cannot be good for humans. Seems obvious to me.
5
@Stan- it's a nice thought, to be sure, but it doesn't seem to speak to this situation.
@Stan
Then never, ever take antibiotics for bacterial encephalitis or other culture proven systemic infections, never ever get chemo for your systemic malignancy, and never ever eat cheese or drink fermented liquids.
Your science is woefully and wildly inaccurate.
2
Stop flying all over the place. Stop spraying all over the place. Stop human over population. Stop greed and the politics of greed. It is no surprise we have deadly fungus. We are practically one ourselves...
12
Wow, there really is a fungus more indestructible than Donald Trump! Keep Robert Mueller away from it, his conclusions will enable it to take over not just America but the whole world!
1
How old are you? Are you old enough to remember Crooks’s “The Yeast Connection”? Was he crazy? Nooo, he wasn’t. Our doctor in the 80s gave the kids and us yeast medication to take orally to take along with antibiotics; this was way before diflucan. And the Europeans were way ahead of us then. Anyone here who believed in yeast overgrowth in the body was a crackpot. Well, surprise surprise.
4
@SMD the problem is *overuse* of antibiotics and antifungals.
2
If anything, those people in tin hats?
They were right all along... !!
2
Alarming as this all is, medicine continues to fail to understand the obvious lesson -- that we need to learn to peaceably cohabit with micro-organisms, as they occupy vital niches in the ecosystem of which we are a part. Instead we see calls for more and better antibiotics, antivirals, anti-fungals, or vaccinations to try to subdue the microbiologic world. It seems inevitable that this persistent folly of humankind in seeking to conquer or control the ecosystem will lead to punishing consequences, in the form of irrevocable harm to the ecosystem. It appears it will take a biologic catastrophe of monumental proportions before humans learn what Native Americans one ago understood intuitively -- that we must live harmoniously with one another, and with all the natural world, as we are part of a greater network of life in which each component can not survive without the others.
5
So rather than cure people who are ill from infections or parasites, we what.... let them die instead of treating? It's not the use of effective medications that is a problem, it's that we overuse and abuse them.
1
I work at a San Francisco Bay Area Hospital in a small microbiology section of the clinical lab. We are not able to identify C.auris. Small microbiology labs are not able to bring on the new technology necessary for rapid identification. Why not?
A lot of expertise has been lost to due retirement and there is a nationwide shortage of trained technologists. Then there is the elimination of experienced supervisors, with their expertise to evaluate and implement new methods, and to consult and advise the Infection Control managers.
Why? Because there is the total lack of support, appreciation, or understanding from upper management for the level of complexity involved in microbiology.
Finally, journalists apparently think doctors find these organisms sitting on the patient’s beds, labeled with scientific names and antibiotic resistant patterns, and big “I am a MDRO” stickers.
Please ask the question—who is doing the work? Any clinical lab work, not just microbiology? A large percentage of medical decisions are based on results from the clinical laboratories, yet you almost never read about who does the work, how the work is performed, how you can or can’t rely on the results, etc.
Does the lab that did your blood test, have more than minimal staffing, have the best instrumentation, have well-trained technologists and technicians? How did that lab detect Candida auris? Or did it?
34
@Rachel M
Rachel, what hospital would want to find this unkillable fungus? They can't actually stop it. Most of the people who are threatened by it could plausibly die of other things. There is no profit incentive to detect it. It's like proving that your own Monet is a fake.
1
Heaven forbid... it was Theranos.
2
...So after "floor tiles" were removed from the hospital room where candida auris still was, how were the tiles disposed of?
9
My father suffers from chronic lung infections and requires antibiotics every so often. They definitely prevented his death on multiple occasions but we’re highly aware of the dangers of over use and resistant bacteria. I’m very glad about the nytimes publishing this article along with the documentary, but we both agreed that it would have been great to read about more solutions to the problem that we could support and do more to protect ourselves.
4
Everyone has candida. I've had it for years. This isn't news. If you take a ton of antibiotics, even for things like acne, you probably have it. The only cure is good gut flora and PROBIOTICS.
Trauma and stress also play a big part in limiting gut healing. So you have to deal with that too. It's all related.
5
>>> "Everyone has candida. I've had it for years. This isn't news."
No. You're confused. "Everyone" (actually 40-60% of humans) has Candida albicans. Usually harmless.
Candida auris is different. Very different.
Details matter.
25
There is a fungus
among us
9
@davequ
:) And we've met the enemy, and he is us.
2
And Florida will turn into one immense petri dish.
F3
1
Beware!
The medical-industrial complex is, in my view, the most evil organization on the planet. Because they exist solely to take advantage of the weakened, the elderly, the ill and the UNEDUCATED (which i literally every patient). Information about this industry is available for free, online on public sites. Now, it's true you would need to follow the headlines regularly to make any sense of it but look at how many people follow politics or sports or their favorite twitter influencer daily.
Regular news outlets will let us know arthroscopy for the knee is worthless but we ignore that. They will . let us know that PSA levels can be dramatically reduced in two weeks by dietary changes thereby avoiding biopsy, we ignore it. Diabetes can be revered by fasting -- it's a fact! Yet people ignore it. Stents are a joke, yet people keep getting them! I could go on all day. Point is patients need to examine their blind devotion to doctors and their own absolute and total disembodiment. They know more about their cars than their bodies. And this is how the Industrial Medical Complex controls you. Fourth leading cause of death in the US is AVOIDABLE HOSPITAL ERROR. Wake up friends. These people are your enemies. If you want to, or absolutely must, engage with this system know it is adversarial when you go into it. Educate yourself about your own body and your options. Know what goes on in hospitals. Understand what is driving your physician!
12
@ck Are you a Trump follower who denies science? "Diabetes can be revered by fasting"? So much wrong there.
1
@ck these enemies are there for you when you need them. At all hours, away from their families.
2
@M . No, I am not. And, no, I am not. However what I am saying about fasting and diabetes is actually true. Many people who are morbidly obese have diabetes. Some of them also have gastric by-pass surgery. After the surgery some of them have their blood sugar revert back to normal. At first it was assumed it was because of the surgery and/or the weight loss. Then the MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT (not me) realized it was that they were't eating due to the surgery itself and eating very little subsequently. And that the reversal of the diabetes occurred before they even lost a pound! You are welcome!
Republicans and Trump— This is your opportunity to save the world —if you could muster the recourses and personally make money, both viable options.
it may do us all some good, if we all write letters, snail mail and email and make phone calls by simply Google and even Yelp with contact information, requesting pesticide, manure companies, are vegetable and grain farmers and our cattle, beef, poultry Farms and simply ask what are you doing to prevent or continue this pathogen destroying all humankind. And CC 2 State and County EPA departments, and you're state and local elected officials. Also CC all news media an advertising agencies to let them know you'll simply start growing your own or create a community conclave that we make our own manure and start Victory vegetable gardens.
It has been done in our past and I trust you realize it could be done currently.
also, any doctor office or Healthcare facility you attend regularly, send a letter to the top officials and ombudsman, I know for a fact a New Jersey it was Providence Memorial Healthcare facility, Little Company of Mary, and demand to know if any of vents occurred at the facility you attend and if so how are they sterilizing and what are they going to do to prevent it from happening again. And make sure you CC 2 news media and all the emails given in this article to health officials local and Federal. It takes about 20 minutes of your time but can benefit you your whole lifetime. Apathy is pathetic.
4
It's not "mysterious" if you know what's causing the infection.
4
I read an article which stated that fungus and viruses which are frozen in the Tundra are now spreading due to global warming. This is really scary. Why is the CDC covering this up
3
@John Smith
The thawing tundra in Siberia is also releasing mass quantities of methane which contributes to global warming. It figures that it would be the Russians who are responsible for the destruction of the planet.
1
I was always under the opinion that the biggest threat to the US is the disinfection industry who sold Americans on sanitizing everything thus reducing the children’s immunity to germs
6
The use of antibiotics in the U.S., whether relating to humans or other animals, is simply an outrage. Compared to the Netherlands, there is hardly any regulation in the U.S.
This is quite a disaster in the making, and we have been aware of this growing disaster for a very long time. But what does the U.S. government actually do about it? Pretty much nothing! How do American citizens react to this Governmental inertia? With their own inertia!
What is this about the U.S.? Look at your gun death epidemic! Look at the opioids epidemic! Why do Americans accept this passively as if it is some God given punishment that has to be endured?
The NYT has written its article, you might get a little angry at your society and write a little comment to prove to the world and especially yourself that you care, but in a few minutes you will lay down on your coach consuming decadently oversized portions of food and drink, while you watch decadently shallow American television - amusing yourselves to death, while nothing substantially changes in your third-world country.
17
The stupidity of man knows no bounds, this is the result of profit for the sake of profit. It will return us to the dark ages where it was common to die in your 30s and 40s. I dont worry about it all am going to die of something someday.
2
What molds are in the air we live and breathe? To answer this question and establish a simple low cost approach, I lead a dozen medical students in the Island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean following the fungal meningitis that killed over 50 persons and hospitalized over 2000 in several states in the USA. We mapped regions in the Island with highest fungal counts using Google maps. We had hoped that using our approach the entire world could mapped for areas of high mold counts and also characterize the molds. Our established approach could identify areas in the world with Candida auris before the outbreaks and save lives. The link below is our published
https://www.longdom.org/abstract/significant-heterogeneity-in-airborne-mold-quantities-on-the-caribbeanisland-of-st-kitts-health-implications-and-impact--8875.html
8
@Girish Kotwal In order to identify What species of fungi are in the air in surrounding places where we live in. A little more sophisticated approach is required but nothing close to being tedious. or too difficult. The link below is the method that can be considered for determining whether deadly fungi like Candida auris are lurking in the vicinity.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4df2/8e358ddaeafae2db2318edc3d1676a3beda5.pdf
3
WAIT! CDC or the hospital at the end of the article didn't think to take the 72 year old man an extract samples to see why he was discharged without carrying the fungus?! Why was this man resistant?! This could be the cure-all or lead a path to helping others and they just discharged him?! and what reprimandation did the hospital have for not taking care of this patient? I hope it was something that the man did not have to pay for the days he was in this hospital and being neglected with just Basics such as cleaning up his eliminations ...
1
There is no mystery about why the latest reckless open-borders, transmitted plague is kept 'secret', and why its being reported at the end of the weekly news cycle so most of the public remains unaware of it! ITS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY that can be made by our 1% flooding our nation with 1-2/yr million often sick slave-wage immigrants that's bringing drug resistant tuberculosis, Zika, measles and all manner of long absent diseases back into our nation. The present flood of disease from other countries is precisely why no vaccination is now so dangerous. This homicidal risk for profits via a manic greed for a slave wage "flexible labor market" and trade floods of not inspected goods across borders is so deeply ingrained that the head of our CDC recommended against closing the borders around the Ebola plague that ended by killing many thousands in Africa decreeing that "some people might lose some money" if the borders there were closed! Then an American volunteer in Africa that got Ebola was actually allowed back into the USA, two nurses got Ebola, and a pandemic here almost occurred. The greed and power of our 1% merchant class runs so deep that even the law mandating the inspection of all containers for nuclear devices is still not being enforced on a large fraction of those that enter our ports. So our 1% obviously also think its worth worth a high risk of having a nuke detonated in a major port like NY or LA harbor could kill several millions so that they can make more money.
4
These fungi can be anywhere: filthy subway trains, restaurants, gyms, changing rooms in department stores, etc...This is beyond alarming.
3
@Marc Castle
And soil. Dirt!
1
President Trump has described himself as a “serious germaphobe.”
Perhaps he will seize on this problem and provide the leadership to solve it... like a moonshot. Then there might be something universally recognized as a positive contribution of his presidency to human well-being.
Or not.
7
If governments want to arrest and quarantine people, including children, for failing to be vaccinated they should require that hospitals publicly report incidents of out of control infections. Hospital acquired infections are a major cause of death in America.
6
What government is stressing people for not being vaccinated?
1
The president recommended that the National Institute's research be cut by over four billion dollars. At the present time only 18% if the NIH applications are filled.
These are applications from America's scintists who are trying to solve our medical problems.
Nute Gingridge recommended that we double the National Institutes of Health's budget. He said that he recommends that as a conservative. We can cure any illness if we put our efforts into the endeavor.
6
@Andrew Popper
Not to be at all cynical, but somehow the CDC is headquartered in Georgia, Newt's home state.
1
Nature always wins. The only thing that can save us is a rational based approach to the problem and that means reducing world population, thereby reducing spread and reducing antibiotic use for indicated causes only.
Everything else creates conditions in which resistant and virulent bugs are getting selected and they will then achieve what we were not prepared to do voluntarily: Thin out the herd.
And once again, the planet will be better off for it.
3
@Kara Ben NemsiWhy don't you lead us by example?
1
Overuse of Azole fungicides in agriculture has created a perfect environment for mutating funguses (like candida auris) to develop and spread. That's one aspect of this story that troubles me -- which (if any) government agency is or would be responsible for cutting back this chemical excess, before it wipes us out? I would have said the chemicals program at the EPA... but how active are they, now?
The other aspect of the story that terrified me is that medical tourism is becoming fashionable, and some of those medical tourists are coming back to the USA with nosocomial conditions like Aspergillosis that then spread to other patients when they seek follow-up care in US hospitals.
So we have a public health crisis, that's pumped by the greed of corporate agriculture and then spread by refugees from the greed of the Insurance industry. This is a plague that owes its origin and spread to late-stage Capitalism.
Individual hospitals (especially ones that profit from medical tourism) are understandably cautious about admitting to fungus infections. Countries with robust National Health systems should be better at responding to public health challenges like this one, but Capitalism is a wily fungus too, isn't it?
12
@Tim
The EPA only regulates fungicide use in the United States, and this problem is foreign in origin. It was brought to the US from Southern Asia and South America.
The impulse to blame US corporations and US regulatory agencies is misplaced. The world does not rotate around us. The US government does not and cannot control everything. Governments in the Global South are an order of magnitude more irresponsible and corrupt than our own is, and there is very little we can do about that.
What we can do is avoid importing the contagious consequences of their irresponsibility. That is, while we cannot control the actions of foreign entities that create these diseases, we can control whether or not those diseases cross our borders, and we ought to do so.
2
I view this article akin to the CDC report in 1981 on the five previously health gay young men who succumbed to AIDS. The public health implications of those five cases was not fully understood at the time.
In the world of infectious diseases, fungal infections receive zero respect. I hope that this article acts as a catalyst and bellwether to address this emerging infectious and frightening threat in this country and the globe. Hopefully, they’ll soon get all the respect they command.
16
@drewmenace
One of the first AIDS opportunistic infections was Candida albicans, Oral Thrush.
1
I am an immunocompromised person who worked in the pharma and hospital industry for more than three decades. I've battled recurrent resistent infections, both bacterial and fungal, for over a decade. They attack swiftly and confound even the best hospitals. We are not prepared.
Your reporting here is extraordinary and deserves accolades. It is not a popular subject but in many ways it could be even as big a threat to humanity as climate change. Yet rarely do we hear about it. Please keep up the good work reporting on this issue!
37
The high use of herbicides and antibiotics has produced resistant weeds and bugs. It should be no surprise that the use of antifungals would lead to the same result.
The core problem is the need to produce high yield crops for an ever expanding population.
3
@Learned Sceptic The only REAL solution to the problem is humane reduction in the population of our planet. But I don't see that happening any time soon. Right now, Homo Sapiens is like a densely-packed population of herd animals. We're facing a global shortage of arable land, clean water, clean air, good education and many other things. Not a pretty picture.
5
The core problem is short sighted greed everything is money driven and a corrupt state is sitting and watching - crazy!
2
@Iman Onymous Malthusian Satanic nonsense. There are no shortages, only localized poverty.Population expansion is self correcting once a society becomes wealthy they choose to have less children. Thus the population decline in all first world countries save for immigration.
Thank you for this excellent article. Can you do another please on the spread of Candida Albicans (yeast infections) that seem to be reaching epidemic and chronic conditions in women. If you look on online forums, on amazon review boards, on the exploding numbers of “ cures” being marketed for yeast infections, you will realize something is off. I have had chronic candida triggered after stints in hospitals.After many doctors, ob/gyns and seeming resistance to anti fungals, i went to one who prescribed gentian violet (which helped temporarily)...this doctor said she has seen an explosion in cases of candida in women that appears resistant to treatment. But i guess because its an illness that primarily affects women, it doesnt get talked about
4
@terrymander- it doesn't get talked about because it doesn't kill people, necessarily.
Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean much, what you read online even less, and a lot of those "cures" are nothing but quack nostrums. Caveat emptor.
2
These comments are the perfect example of the panic they were concerned about.
8
@Tim- it's still not a reason not to tell people.
4
Exactly
1
But, ... why would anyone care? The individuals tracking and treating this disease and dedicated but poorly compensated individuals who toil in the background. If this disease somehow overwhelms us, who would we have to blame but ourselves as we focus all of our attention on "other, more important things" like fairness, equity, gender equality in all things, LGBT bathrooms, the new socialist democrats, redistribution of wealth. Existential disease threats should be managed by those fools who went into science and health care. Let them solve this problem while the rest of us, more important people, focus on how to increase taxes, ensure the right to abortion and increase the number of Supreme Court Justices.
7
Most people can walk and chew gum. Humanity can. Please do not use this as an excuse to attack those you don’t agree with on politics.
2
@Martin
Sorry, no they can't. We are focused on global warming and gender inequality while ebola spreads in west africa and novel organisms create new disease. Stay focused on the House of Representatives and Trump's tax returns. The rest of us will try to save the world from existential threats.
3
Found some info that states 122 nm UV light is absorbed by air, hence the moniker "vacuum UV" - must be used in a vacuum. Might be problematic to use in a hospital room or open surgery operation, as some have suggested.
Sad the author conflates two different fungal species to blame the use of fungicides on crops. Dr. Meis might talk to crop diseases specialists about different fungicides and their modes of action. Plus, there is no such thing as antifungicide (= pro-fungus??). It’s a fungicide.
2
When I worked in long-term care, we employed a new technology, the Xenex germ-killing robot (seriously!). It was extremely expensive; we bought it with grant money. It was on a regular cleaning schedule; first regular housekeeping was done on a room, then the robot would go in (and the resident had to vacate; no one could be in the room while the robot did its job). It cleaned a large area that no human could reach without ladders and special equipment, and it cleaned things that hadn't ever been cleaned before. It did away with bacteria and viruses, including c.diff, ebola, MRSA, and many others. If someone was ill, their room and every public area they went into got special treatment.
Why doesn't every hospital and long-term care facility use a Xenex? (www.xenex.com) Because of the cost, of course. That seems to be more important than patient health.
7
@mrichtel, @AndrewJacob
The man discussed in the last few paragraphs declined to be named because he feared the consequences. You didn't name him, but you gave his age and named his niece.
You can say that his niece gave you permission to name her, but you know as well as I that, by naming her, you are publishing enough information about her uncle to identify him.
Moreover, that information added nothing to the story. Why was it included?
13
Health care professionals need to exercise better infection control. Doctors are the biggest offenders.
We have gloves , gowns, masks, head covers to protect health care workers. If they follow proper protocol, there should be no reason to neglect an infected patient.
If you have a loved one in the hospital, do not let ANYONE touch them without gloves, a mask and after proper hand washing. DON'T be shy.
Stethescopes are contaminated. BP cuffs are contaminated. Demand to have personal exam equipment for your loved one.
3
It figures that the possible next pandemic would be caused by our own stupid overuse of pesticides. What drives such overuse? Profit. Short-term greed.
Thank you, capitalism.
6
It has always been thus. The way of nature. Big and small predators taking out the week and vulnerable (and the unlucky). Making space for the young and healthy. Modern medicine is trying to change that, with some success, but ultimately the laws of biology will prevail.
2
Somehow the seriousness of the worldwide problem, according to the article, doesn't jibe with the hokey, cartoonish style of the video.
Maybe simple sea water will dissolve it.
Five or six years ago a friend, who is an esteemed biologist, told me to stop using hand sanitizers and anti virus wipes. He said for me to tell others to stop too. He was horrified at stories of people wiping down all surfaces wherever they are: airplanes, public restrooms, etc. “An entire strata of life is being obliterated and humans will suffer for it.” His words haunt me now.
901
@Sleepless In Los Angeles
Hand sanitizers don't kill everything. They have no effect on one of the most common and deadly infections spread in hospitals and nursing homes. Clostridium difficile, or C.dif as it is commonly called. Wiping surfaces down is not germ genocide. Air craft cleaners, house keeping staff do it anyway. Some are advocating that stainless steel be replaced with copper because of its natural germicidal properties. Stainless steel does nothing to control germs and viruses.
39
@Sleepless In Los Angeles I would like to know more about any possible connection between hand sanitizers and antibiotic resistant bacteria and fungi. Because I have a compromised immune system, I use hand sanitizer when it’s impossible to wash them, which is pretty often. This is the first I’ve heard that hand sanitizers help breed super bugs. Given the widespread use of hand sanitizers in schools and musical settings, it would be helpful to establish any connection and also to come up with an alternative, if necessary. Or, do we know whether even more people would get sick with the flu and pneumonia today were it not for hand sanitizers? Not sure there’s an easy solution, but getting antibiotics and antifungals out of food production seems like a start.
57
@Galfrido
The connection between excessive use of disinfectants and asthma has been known for years. Basically, the children who were not exposed to the full spectrum of normal environmental flora grow up immunocompromised because their immune system never learned to deal with them without overreacting.
The case for hand sanitizers is different and more complicated. Clearly, where virulent infectious microbes are prevalent, i.e. in hospitals, they are indicated to prevent spread. In all other places, however, they will just kill the harmless, but sensitive flora and allow it to be replaced with the virulent one. I.e. over time hand sanitizers will have the same effect as antibiotics. Breed the spread of resistant microbes while depriving the immune system from establishing a robust defense against them.
90
It's not just climate change, but the world's dependency on all sorts of things like insecticides, fungicides, hormones, et al. This is not only polluting our environment but wreaking havoc with our bodies. And the hospitals failure to warn people of the outbreak is pretty outrageous. Elective surgery can wait if there is a problem at any facility, we have the right to know.
5
We need to know which companies make these fungicides and boycott them until they are banned.
We should boycott the companies who produce these dangerous fungicides and pesticides until they are banned. Thanks to their lobbyists who fund today's politicians as well as their flunkie, the present president who tilts at windmills, accusing them of causing cancer. The real potential for a pandemic is the serious emergency, not the immigrants who wish to have a better life.
1
@Lisette Prince
Been buying a lot of industrial fungicides, have you? For a boycott to have any effect, the actual customers have to participate. In this case, the relevant customers are farmers in Southern Asia, South America, and Southern Africa. Unless you happen to own such an enterprise, your "boycott" will be meaningless.
We (US citizens) can't control what fungicides people in other countries use, but we can control whether or not we import the diseases that result from that use. Let's focus on that, shall we?
5
@J. L. Cannon
We can buy organic.
2
Twenty-first century humans: Begging for unnecessary antibiotics while declining vital vaccines. The result: bacterias and viruses all over the place. Really, how dumb can we be?
13
So Monsanto and what competition is left will find the way to Kill so many more with the GMO and multitude of poisons that farmers all over the world are forced often by coercion to use.
Part of the race to self-extermination by the human race in the name of Greed.
2
The video that accompanies this article is so incredibly well done not only from a storytelling point of view but also from the design and editing standpoint. Wow!
1
Nature bats last.
3
So much for global warming.
1
“There was no need to put out a news release during the outbreak,” said Oliver Wilkinson, a spokesman for the hospital.
Why on earth NOT???????
Don’t people choose hospitals to be treated? Shouldn’t they know.
Easy answer: Money
2
The Andromeda Strain - Michael Chricton wasn’t too far off nos was he? We have Soylent Green to look forward to next.
5
this is another unintended consequence of human caused climate change.
Climate Change Brings New Diseases
https://www.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/the-environment/climate-change/47895.html
1
kinda reminds me of the war of the worlds movie....Only here it took a long time for the pathogens to kill the invaders.....
2
Everyone thought it would be a virus or nuclear holocaust that exterminates Homo sapiens. I think it’s funny that fungi could kill us all. Multi drug resistant pathogens are not just prevalent they are ubiquitous. We see them every single day, and what do we do? We empirically pull out the big guns and then create even more problems. I can’t grow cukes, zucchini, apples and even my tomatoes get killed by fungi. Bats, bees, amphibians, who cares. Party on maga crowd.
4
Is this an extension of the MRSA scare (real, but scary) found in hospitals in the 1990s? I mean, are we talking about one type of fungus or one fungus among many antibiotic-resistant bacteria [formerly?] known as MRSA?
@Lexicron mrsa is a bacteria, specifically, methicillin resistant staph aureus. Candida auris is a yeast. They are related only in that they developed drug resistance. While MRSA was once uncommon, it is now a frequent cause of infections.
3
@Lexicron The acronym "MRSA" stands for "Methicillin-Resistant Staphlococcus Aureus". It is a strain of the spherical-shaped bacteria commonly known as "Staph". The drug resistant strain "MRSA" became resistant to the antibiotic Methicillin within a few years after Methicillin was discovered in the 1950's. Since MRSA was first described, it has undergone a great deal of Darwinian selective pressure and has risen to the challenge. Now, there are genetic variants of MRSA that are resistant to just about every antibiotic known. So, today, "MRSA" is widely recognized as standing for "Multiple-Drug-Resistant Staphlococcus Aureus". It's a real good creature to avoid.
What this article is talking about is a type of fungus. as opposed to a bacterium, that has, in a way probably similar to MRSA (Darwinian selection), developed resistance to many types of drugs that kill fungi. Sounds like another creature to avoid, if possible.
3
@Lexicron- where did you get the idea that MRSA or VRSA were "over?" They're not, just the opposite! Where you used to find one or two infections like these in an urban clinic per year, now you find one or two PER WEEK and most everywhere. Drug protocols are still just as poor at treating them now as they were then.
Getting scarier by the minute.
1
Well, there ya go. We don't need the Andromeda strain we have Monsanto.
8
Quick numbers for drug resistant bacterial and fungal infection deaths US and World:
World population (May 2018): 7,600M
US pop (Jan 2019): 324M
# deaths worldwide: 0.7M
# deaths US: 0.162M
Death rate worldwide: 92 per 1M people
Death rate US: 500 per 1M people
#MAGA (Make America Germ-Annihilated)
2
Modern factory farming is a deadly business. We have e-coli, salmonella, and listeriosis outbreaks associated with manuring crops from the industrial warehouses breeding millions of chickens and pigs and the plants processing the carcasses. We have arsenic-laced rice from ground water depletion arising from over-irrigation. We have milk, cheese and meats contaminated with drugs and hormones administered to keep the animals alive and growing under unnatural conditions. We have beef feed-lot contamination of drinking water supplies. We have resistant fungal infections arising from the profligate application of fungicides. We have oceanic dead zones with all aquatic life apart from deadly algae killed by run-off of fertilizers and pesticides from farmland. We have deadly zoonotic infections ranging from strains of influenza to SARS arising from factory farming of chickens, ducks and pigs. We have the mass die-off of pollinators upon whom we rely for vegetable and fruit production due to the environmental impacts of pesticides. And, of course, we have no idea what the ultimate impacts of GMO corn, soya and rape seed (canola) will be on human health and the environment. In the US, agri-business is king, and bugger all is being done to regulate factory farming and contemporary US food production, distribution, and labelling. After all, corporations pretty much own Congress and the FDA.
28
@Cephalus This has nothing to do with US farms, the FDA, or US corporations. It's coming from South America and Southern Asia. If you want to complain about agricultural practices in those countries, fine, but the bigger issue is that the contagion has been spreading from the global south to the US and Europe and our governments kept that a secret even as their citizens were infected and killed.
Source:
"At present, C. auris is separated into four geographic clades: the South Asian, South African, South American, and East Asian clades. In India, clonal isolates have been detected over very widespread geographic regions. Within each geographic clade, however, there are minimal genetic differences. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of U.S. isolates indicated two geographic clades: the South Asian clade, and the South American clade."
https://cmr.asm.org/content/31/1/e00029-17
2
@J. L. Cannon You are wrong!!!! Don't pretend that you don't know about farming, corporation and others like GMO. USA is the most greedy country and will finish like Roman Empire. Be real!.
2
@J. L. Cannon
Sorry, but Nope.
It is not coming from abroad.
It is developing world-wide from different strains separated by millions of years of development; based on genomes that have been sequenced on the different strains. Shouting "Minimal genetic differences" in the strains; that simply is not accurate.
Something "we" collectively are doing to our food supply is creating this super-fugus and "we" collectively are doing this many areas of the world.
It’s important to note where this is likely from. For once, hopefully, we can leave out “foreigners!” Bad things usually are a result of “those” foreigners. I wonder how long before white supremacists, ignorants and racists like Trump pick up on this, if they haven’t already!!! Nothing wrong or bad ever comes from their own land, it’s always somebody else’s fault!!
2
@Frea It is coming here from Southern Asia and South America. It literally is coming from "foreigners."
Source:
"At present, C. auris is separated into four geographic clades: the South Asian, South African, South American, and East Asian clades. In India, clonal isolates have been detected over very widespread geographic regions. Within each geographic clade, however, there are minimal genetic differences. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of U.S. isolates indicated two geographic clades: the South Asian clade, and the South American clade."
https://cmr.asm.org/content/31/1/e00029-17
3
@J. L. Cannon
Anything in the name of the segregation cause, eh?. What a pity.
What a perfect time for the racist-nationalist conspiracy theory movement to be undermining and eliminating government medical research and oversight. I suppose they are probably hoping for some global pandemic that kills everyone except white people. Just like with their rhetoric, the opposite will probably prove to be true.
3
Worry over reputations, while we wantonly rape and pillage our planet. Plato’s Cave forever blinds.
2
Yesterday, the knives and pitchforks were out for high-tech – especially among the candidista – with one operative meme metaphorically being:
“This is your brain on AI”
Today – you all may want to evolve, just a smidgen...
Because – this is what your world will increasingly look like, off AI...
This – and planes falling out of the sky and trains going off the rails...
Liz in particular...
If you had a choice between establishing an agency to control AI – and one to control these sorts of scourges...
What would you choose...
For clarity, singling you out because there’s some good thinking in there – just that it’s all mixed up with other stuff...
Mark in particular...
“...Do you want to sell sugar gossip for the rest of your life, or do you want to go with Steve and change the world...
https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2813-do-you-want-to-sell-sugar-water-for
This article has been particularly concerned because I currently am going through a situation that seems to relate to this. I was sick with some sort of skin infection on my face that look like pimples and the doctor put me on an antibiotic which after a week I developed a rash on my body and the doctor told me to stop taking the antibiotic because I had a yeast infection. I stop the antibiotic and the Houston infection rash went away but the skin infection on my face got way worse this article has been particularly concerned because I currently am going through a situation that seems to relate to this. I was sick with some sort of skin infection on my face that look like pimples and the doctor put me on an antibiotic which after a week I developed a rash on my body and the doctor told me to stop taking the antibiotic because I had a yeast infection. I stop the antibiotic and the Houston infection rash went away but the skin infection on my face got way worse. I went back to the doctor and he put me on yet another antibiotic (Minocycline) and gave me 3 pills of fluconazole to take for the rash/yeast infection. The skin infection on my face is getting better but I’m still extremely sick. Fatigue, body aches, fever. I feel like I cannot go to the hospital but I’m not sure what I should do.
2
@Lisa
Is your doctor an infectious disease specialist? If so a second opinion?
2
@Lisa
Change doctors pronto.
@Lisa it’s been a while since you commented, I hope that your infection has cleared up and that you’re feeling better.
It generally, don’t let articles that you come across guide your self-assessment, they will only terrify you. Secondly, definitely make an appointment with a medical practitioner and be upfront with your thoughts and concerns so that they know what they’re dealing with. Let them use their training to diagnose you. Thirdly, there are literally millions of strains of fungi that can infect us. Don’t jump to the conclusion that you’re carrying c. Auris.
I’ve had rashes that took literally months to clear up and ones that cleared up in days. The world is big and full of variety. Just don’t assume the worst.
4
We have the best government money can buy.
4
What about NYC mass transit?
Subway and bus handrails cannot possibly be transmitters!
1
@RT- actually they are called fomites, and yes they can be.
1
As people flood in from all over the world some legally and millions illegally we would be best served to try and get the traffic down. We've turned our safety into a political battle that now threatens the health and safety of our loved ones. This is really bad. When reading up on biotechnology companies who are at the forefront of developing new drugs to treat these viruses. They have massive hurdles to overcome as the FDA holds these drugs up for years, sometimes decades. The good news is there are companies bringing new drugs along to fight these bad viruses in addition to new drugs to fight different forms of cancer. I just came out of a drug trial in Florida where they treated my prostate cancer with this new drug called topsalysin (PRX302) and it completely ablated the cancer tumors in my prostate. I'm currently cancer free and it only took one treatment. I play 18 holes the next next day. So we have some amazing drugs but big pharmaceutical companies often make more money treating the cancer than curing it. The reason I signed up is they said there's no side effects and I had some small discomfort but it cleared up fast. The FDA needs to fast track these new drugs with no side effects as soon as possible. Here's hope from a recent study just look up " Ibrexafungerp Shows Favorable Clinical Activity in Resistant Fungal Infections, Including Candida auris Cases from the CARES Study" hope this helps some of you. Peace!
5
So how many times has a deadly disease swept through human civilization and decimated the population? Once; the Black Plague you say? Oh, didn't the Plague have two or three waves; so three right? Nope. The answer is more than twenty. All it takes is a deadly disease and people living in close quarters. What happened in the Middle Ages is just as likely if not more likely; to happen today. Not to worry though; all you have to do is tell yourself you "don't believe" the danger is that great.
2
@Surfrank
Don't forget the flu epidemic of 1918. 50 million dead.
3
Articles like this spell out the very good reasons, no one should ever trust an agency like the CDC with our individual health. They are concerned only with the "aggregate". This obviously goes for anything relating to pharmaceuticals and vaccines as well.
2
As an American emergency physician, who has practiced medicine over a 30 year timespan, I believe greed and the profit motive combined with an out-of-control lawsuit happy society will hinder resolution of this kind of problem. Patients want medicine for their self-limited sniffle, so antibiotics are over-prescribed because health care is now big business and “happy” patients means more business. Quality of care and public health concerns are grossly subservient to profit. Just look at the plethora of expensive health care advertising when that money should be spent on health care delivery.
The lack of tort reform in American medicine contributes to perversities in the culture of medicine in ways which are perhaps insidious but obvious to most doctors. Fear of being sued definitely motivates overprescribing of antibiotics. More episodic care whereby patients go to an urgent care center or emergency department, rather than receive continuity of care provided by a good primary care doctor who can follow patients over time, further encourages overprescribing rather than wait and see.
Agribusiness is also all about profit. As such, that industry is unlikely to stop using fungicides without government intervention.
19
@Doug M Re your "tort reform" statement: preventable medical errors are the 3rd leading cause of death in this country as per the Nat. Institute of Medicine in 2000, and others, like Makary in 2016. These two studies didn't estimate how many people suffer not death but permanent disability from medical errors in the U.S. What plans does "tort reform" have for preventing medical errors? Not many. Aren't medical errors a bigger epidemic than drug overdoses? Estimates are that medical errors kill 255,000 to 400,000 a year in the U.S. How many more are injured?
2
@Charles Bruscino not only does there have to be medical error, but there must be intentional dereliction of duty. Tort reform will not reduce unintentional errors, but will reduce unnecessary testing and treatment.
2
@Sarah- Tort reform has been tried in several states over the last two decades, and has not led to those kinds to regulatory reforms nor has it produced any of the cost-savings it was alleged to provide.
Hospitals, doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, etc are health care practitioners. Not scientists (with the possible exception of epidemiologists). I repeat, not scientists. This is not to denigrate them. They are where the rubber meets the road, the down and dirty, the nitty-gritty. And therein lies the failure of the capitalist system when it comes to health and the environment. Or for that matter, to many social concerns. The market is not the answer to everything. And we've been propagandized to believe it is.
4
@James F Traynor- that's quite untrue. Anyone trained in healthcare is also trained in the scientific method in all its facets. What you've said makes it sound like statisticians are not scientists because they don't do bench research, which is a patent misunderstanding of the concept.
@laguna greg
They do not do primary research in their fields. They cannot for obvious reasons but depend on the information they get from journals and drug company detailers. They must use the drugs and methods given to them. They do not shape the research. It is shaped by Big Pharma and it''s largely market oriented - the profit motive.
2
@James F Traynor- James, I'm afraid you are singularly unaware of how field or laboratory research works in our country, or the training scientific practitioners including healthcare providers get in the method. That includes clinicians, field, laboratory and academic/theoretical researchers, in all parts of the public and private sectors.
Unfortunately, there's no simple answer or explanation to what you've said other than to say you've got the wrong idea. If you bother to take the time to read an entire year's worth or more of any of the respected medical journals, you'll see papers written by most everyone in the spectrum of healthcare, and according to specialty. That includes clinical practitioners and even some nurses, who originated, found funding and conducted studies you say they don't know how to do. Some of the clinical research started and run by doctors in the field even includes drug trials, so no, not all drug research is "shaped" by Big Pharma.
Two thoughts :
1 - It is sad that health and environmental costs of our present food production systems are not being quantified in a fashion that most folks can understand. If more folks understood the "cost" of our inexpensive and plentiful foods they would seek alternatives.
2 - Hospitals have more "super-bugs" because we've created an ideal environment for them to thrive by eliminating their biological competitors (other "bugs"). Same is true in our factory farm environments. I feel safer in an environment that is clean, but not sterile because I know in a biologically active environment pathogens ( bugs that will hurt me) are far less successful because they have lots of competition from other organisms. Folks that make sourdough bread from an active culture have a great understanding of how to manage a mixed culture of bacteria and yeast... never ceases to amaze me how the good bugs keep the bad ones in check.
2
@Rob Cohen
So you want an alternative to the food system we have now which means less plentiful and more expensive food. Got it. Poor people will go hungry.
1
This is both scary and disgraceful. The cover uppers must accept the urgency of transparency and change their ways. Thank you to The New York Times for publishing this important news. Hopefully, with it now out in the open, there will be proper action.
1
So now that word is out on this fungal outbreak, let's follow the level of hysterics and see if the C.D.C. and other agencies world-wide were correct to conceal this epidemic.
(Note how the word outbreak was used instead of epidemic in furtherance of the cover up?)
One commenter from a hospital in Vermont said her staff were unaware of this, which means they were never told to be on the look out for the presence of this fungus. Heads must roll for covering this up.
It is a wrong conclusion that a coverup was necessary to prevent people from unnecessarily being afraid to go into certain hospitals. People will get the medical attention they need, and hospitals that can't manage the infectious spread of this fungus do not deserve to be patronized. Covering up this epidemic could very well have made the spread worse by intaking patients to certain locations where they maybe not should have been taken.
For profit hospitals are all in it for the power of the free market to rule over the delivery of health care, but when it comes time for patients to choose where they'd like to get care, these institutions have to cover up the facts about this epidemic to prevent the freedom of the market choices people would otherwise have the agency to make.
I would not go to one of the hospitals that had this fungus bug in them not because it was in the building but because the staff are not to be trusted because they were part of the cover up: they should have blown the whistle.
6
The evolution of germs (fungal or bacterial) challenges not only the compromised immune systems of vulnerable individuals but also the compromised beliefs of Societies that politicize or corporatize the very Science seeking the answers to the challenges faced.
Show us the list of dirty hospitals, NOW !
4
@New World
Well, I saw the list, and it looks like you need to move to a deserted island. Now. Without any hospitals.
1
Sounds like “War of the World’s!”
Let’s face it, folks, the Earth is sick and we have unprecedented amounts of autoimmune diseases. At my book club, of eight women, six of us had some weird autoimmune disease. These are not lazy, sloths...these are active women who work hard at staying healthy with good nutrition and exercise. All of us are avid hikers and kayakers. And now this article about this resistant fungus!
Any Scientists, looking into the correlation of these medicine resistant diseases and Climate Change? We are all interconnected, all of us, organic beings.
15
@Mari I couldn’t agree more. I was the healthiest, most fit person I knew when I went to a hospital to have a minimally invasive back surgery in 2015. I complained of illness for a year and a half and at one point was told I needed to see a shrink. My health plummeted and finally when I started to smell rotting flesh in my head, an ENT did a head CT and found a MRSA type infection in my skull. It had to be surgically removed. I have never been the same since. And I worry all the time about all the antibiotics and steroids I was in while they all just thought I was crazy. That led to more back degeneration, another surgery to correct that, an injury to my ureter during that surgery, countless procedures, steroids and antibiotics again. My goal is to never set foot in a hospital again! But in the meantime, I struggle daily with auto immune problems that I will have for life. Our planet is sick and humankind is going with it 😢
17
@Christine
First, I wish you well. Completely well.
Back in the 1990s, I personally knew two healthy women in their 30s who contracted MRSA in a hospital in L.A., and died from the infection. They had been hospitalized for minor surgery. Resistant bacteria have been killing people for quite some time. It's terrifying. Atul Gawanda, a cardiologist at Mass General, I think, and a frequent writer for the New Yorker, has an article in the archives intended to alert the public (including medical professionals) to simple measures, like cleanliness checklists, that actually can stem MRSA-type contagions where they spread most readily--hospitals.
4
I am immuno compromised (have no spleen and already had a case of bacterial endocarditis that nearly killed me). It is beyond my comprehension that I am not allowed to know what hospitals and nursing homes have had it. Now I will have to weigh whether I can visit friends and family in those facilities.
2
In the meantime, getting new antibiotics and antifungals approved by the FDA is just brutal (speaking as someone who has gone through the process multiple times).
3
@John
is that a good thing or a bad thing? being new is not synonymous with being safe and effective.
1
Some of those new ones are fairly toxic to humans, not just to unwanted infections.
“Health officials say that disclosing outbreaks frightens patients about a situation they can do nothing about, particularly when the risks are unclear.”
This is not in any way true. Patients can delay or cancel elective procedures. They can choose another hospital. Failing to inform the public is unconscionable. Hospital administrators, physicians, and staff who know the fungus is present and fail to reveal it should be held responsible, legally and morally.
33
Hopefully an easy simple test to detect the fungus is (or will be soon) available for all patients to be admitted to health care facilities.
2
If this were a 1950s Sci-Fi movie, we would be pondering if this was the beginning of the end of us. But it's real, and we should be thinking much more about what's going on. Superbugs and global warming are not unprecedented on this planet, but lack of action remains the norm -- there is no institutional memory of past epidemics or natural disasters, recent or ancient. Mars may look good compared to Queens in 50-100 years.
5
Maybe the overuse of antibiotics, fungicides, herbicides and pesticides have finally disrupted the environment enough for Candida auris and other germs to flourish. We need to rethink Big Ag since it is not feeding the World but making the most money! For example, 40% of the corn grown in Iowa goes to make Ethanol. That is hardly working towards feeding the World.
26
I've had that. I got it on a job in the South Pacific. The fungus spread from my feet and elsewhere. I talked to another engineer who caught something like it in China. We're both very fair-skinned Americans. After struggling for four years with doctors who were more interested in treating it than curing it I cured myself. My friend came up with the same solution independently. It involved concentrated bleach treatments for several months in epsom baths. It's very painful. After two months the bug gave up and responded to over-the-counter medication.
I read somewhere that someone else in England tried a similar solution and it worked.
Sometimes, you have to go old school.
28
This is not old school... this is alternative medicine which mainstream medicine still utterly ignores... modern medicine is a joke and a scam praying on desperate people.
3
Doesnt sound at all like the same infection. Sounds like you got foot fungus.
@Rocketscientist
The world would be a far healthier place if only engineers could be doctors.
I am an emergency room physician in New England. Interestingly, neither I nor any of my partners (polled at work today) have heard of this outbreak.... guess we’re not in on the cover-up.
22
@Sarah -- The perspective you should be taking is one of outrage that your hospital was not warned to be on the lookout for such an outbreak.
4
Vermont doesnt appear on the list of places with most of the identified cases.
@Sarah
Don't you and your colleagues and Chiefs regularly check the CDC website? It's right there.
We now have millions of HIV patients around the world on anti-retroviral medications.
We also have hundreds of thousands of intravenous and other drug users in the USA who are susceptible to and spread a variety of organisms such as Hepatitis C, HIV, MRSA, and undoubtedly other organisms.
We also have hundreds of thousands of individuals on various medications to treat rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, colitis etc. These selectively suppress the immune system.
We also have thousands of individuals who are on immunosuppressive medications because of organ transplant medications.
We have perhaps justifiably stigmatized traditional public health strategies such as quarantine. We may have to relearn them.
It is only a matter of time that new infections will begin to plague some of these populations. It is only a question of when and how severely and what percentage of these populations will be affected.
We also have thousands of individuals with implants of various kinds: pacemakers, artificial joints, stents, etc.
A new pandemic influenza outbreak could prove devastating.
The common denominator in all of this is DNA and RNA in all its varieties and forms. It is unrelenting in its ability to exploit the vulnerabilities we have created.
We are still learning how to understand our genetic code that we share with other animals, bacteria, parasites, fungi, and viruses.
This vulnerability goes far beyond simple antibiotic resistance.
37
@Bohdan A Oryshkevich, MD, MPH Why this wasn’t selected as a NY Times “Pick” is beyond me. You think it’s drawn from a hat?
5
@Rene Pedraza Del Prado
Thank you so much.
It is my fault. I saw the article first thing this morning. It was a godsend. But I did not read it until the afternoon. I think that is easier to get selected if you are an early commentator.
Second, it would have been my second NY Times pick in about ten days or less. I do not want to get too greedy. :)
Third, I always make mistakes in these letters which I later regret. I noticed some here. So, I take that into account.
Fourth, the letter readers have a really tough job reviewing thousands of such letters. They will be dreaming about the end of civilization as we know it for several nights. So, I am grateful for their service regardless of the results.
Fifth, they literally have their eyes on the pulse of NY Times readers. They deserve an article. They could also provide pointers on how to get selected.
Sixth, I wrote this in part because I am mentoring a university biology student in Ukraine and hoping to get her to show an interest in drug resistance which is ultimately a genetics challenge. She is already interested in genetics. Ukraine is a nidus of MDR-TB. It is not likely to get better thanks to President Putin and the war on the East. War zones breed drug resistance.
4
This coverup exposed by the NYT is fuel for conspiracy theorists. Why these hospitals think it’s a good idea to hide outbreaks like this is beyond me. But I’m sure sales of post-apocalypse bunkers and anti-globalist sentiment will now rise yet again.
198
@Richard M.
Money is the reason these hospitals refuse to disclose infection rates. Full disclosure should be mandatory in the interest of public health. I hope our Canadian Cousins are more forthcoming about infection rates than the US.
46
@Richard M.
Yes full disclosure is always desirable ... but, what would you have done if you'd heard it sooner? Built an apocalypse bunker? Gone on an anti-globalist march?
Or become prey to the myriad of cons on the internet promising to restore your immune system?
Its nice to have a moan, its better to propose a viable alternative that would have made any practical difference.
8
@Richard M.
The final sentence of your comment answers the question you asked in the middle sentence. The number of people building bunkers will be matched, or even exceeded, by the number of people postponing elective hospitalization or shopping for "clean" hospitals.
8
Yet another reason why we should all be supporting organic agriculture, which prohibits the use of fungicides.
17
@KellyOrganic farming uses pesticides just as conventional farming does. The only difference is that (with a few exceptions) the pesticides used in organic agriculture have to be derived from “natural” sources. One such example is copper sulfate, which is used in temperate climes as a fungicide. It’s used by both organic farmers although conventional farmers do have synthetic alternatives.
10
@Michelle Yes, but copper sulfate does not cause fungicide resistance as soap does not cause antibiotic resistance. Copper sulfate binds to proteins in fungal cell walls and causes them to break down. Soap dissolves lipid based cell membranes in bacteria. These effects are very difficult to which to develop resistance.
5
@Michelle I suspect that there is a difference between copper sulfate and anti fugal drugs in their contribution to this candida auris crisis.
Worthy journalism and reporting of a significant global threat. But does the accompanying video have to be so cute and punchy in tone? Fast editing, amusing voiceover and playful animations don’t exactly get across the idea that this is serious business.
7
@LRS At the risk of preaching to the choir, I'd say that few people are motivated to watch dry, information-only videos and read scholarly articles. Most lack the understanding, the interest and the attention span. It's the phenomenon that has given us the parasitic political organism that is the symbiotic relationship between what we currently have squatting in the White House and FOX "news". It's a hell of a problem for a democracy. As we can see from the global ignorance and lack of public interest in the causes and results of resistance to anti-microbial drugs, except on the part of specialists (mostly), pervasive disinterest in issues of real importance is just as big a threat to public health as it is a threat to a republic.
2
Captain Trips...
7
Good and important article, but your "expert" Ellen Silberberg loses credibility as an expert when she propagates mythology instead of science. Bacteria do not outnumber human cells, this was proven years ago.
4
@Apu - Latest reporting seems to show human cells make up 43% of the body - the rest is mostly bacteria (https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270)
4
No doubt, Trump will declare this fungus a hoax and then continue to shrink the budget for the Center for Disease Control and fill its leadership with toadies.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/cdc-scandal-preparedness-budget/552200/
23
I'll let you know when it's time to panic......IT'S TIME!
At least this is a great illustration of how evolution in nature works. For those who still doubt the basics of the theory, I give you.....CANDIDA! An invincible fungus among us. We're doomed. Forget global warming, this will do nicely for the end of the world as we know it.
5
The planet will get rid of mankind one way or another, thanks to our mishandling of things.
1
Globalist invasion brings globalist problems, infections that before stayed in one isolated place now spread all around the world rapidly and give little time to mount a defense. This civilization is its own biggest enemy. Greed and the push to raise that stock price 0.2 percent will be the end of us all.
6
@Bill Lombard Except that the article specifically mentioned that the different strains of the disease emerged spontaneously in different parts of the world. They assumed it was transmitted from Asia to the rest of the world, until testing proved that assumption false.
6
@Faustina "different parts of the world" does not mean "all parts of the world." It emerged in four areas: East Asia, South Asia, South America, and Southern Africa. Notice how the United States and Europe are not on that list.
Source:
"At present, C. auris is separated into four geographic clades: the South Asian, South African, South American, and East Asian clades. In India, clonal isolates have been detected over very widespread geographic regions. Within each geographic clade, however, there are minimal genetic differences. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of U.S. isolates indicated two geographic clades: the South Asian clade, and the South American clade."
https://cmr.asm.org/content/31/1/e00029-17
1
@Bill Lombard
It's not like there weren't terrible plagues before globalization.
1
Life itself has become a drug resistant disease. I hope they find a cure.
7
“Health officials say that disclosing outbreaks frightens patients about a situation they can do nothing about...”
What do you mean! We CAN do something about it- choose to not go to that hospital for the duration of the outbreak!! This sounds like profits over people.
13
Please someone with the right connections send this article to Elizabeth Warren. She is the the most qualified candidate to debate this issue.
7
@Jana Hilarious! I love pithy sardonic comments!
A troubling but not entirely unexpected development in a pandemic attack. Farmers should be using biochar in their crops instead of antifungals. Biochar has been shown to improve plant resistance to certain types of fungal attack.
9
This article would have been more helpfully informative if it stated:
1. What bodily system are the primary targets of this fungus.
2. What, if any, symptoms, other than fatigue and general aches, tend to occur with an infection by this fungus.
3. Whether primary care physicians are equipped to detect the presence of this fungus, either by procedures in their offices or by reference to the typical diagnostic laboratory services providers.
4. What are the best informed professional views as to how to avoid contraction and spread of the disease.
5. What the typical diagnostic procedure is and costs.
14
@HJB- read the article more closely:
1- all of them
2- you'll feel sick enough to send you to the doctor.
3- they're not.
4- they don't know.
5- it varies, but your local lab is not ready to test for it anyway.
2
@laguna greg
Most of the responses you have given appear to be your inferences from what the writer of the article suggests or from some independent knowledge that you think you have.
A subject of this importance called for reasonably authoritative statements. A careful reading of the article reveals that most quotations, at best, tiptoe around the fringes of the issues or are generalized statements of concern.
In an article, such as this, readers deserve quotations that directly address the questions I have listed or that clear state, "We do not know, and we should be doing the following in our effort to find out."
This is the most frightening article I've read in ages. Aside from the immediate health threat it makes me fearful for the longterm affect this fungus may have on the planet. I've always thought that humans would eventually make the earth uninhabitable but that it would take thousands of years. I've drastically cut back that estimate.
490
@@ ManhattanWilliam
Me too!
The more I think about this, the more scary it gets.
Who is the most vulnerable? Old people. Sick people. Babies.
Babies? Does this mean home births now as the safest?
32
@@ ManhattanWilliam
The earth will remain habitable, just not for humans. ;)
More importantly, be careful your fear does not mae you prey for internet con men promising a 'solution' that will remove the cause of your fear. They are already re-writing their web sites promising expensive supplements to perfect your immune system and cure Candida auris.
After all when the experts say it is currently incurable the conspiracy theorists hear that there is a cure but its being kept secret from them.
There is money to be made fleecing those who fear.
10
@ ManhattanWilliam
The fungus while hard to kill is not as lethalm as matter of fact most healthy people can overcome the bug via their very own immune system
5
The most likely outcome of this C. auris issue will be: one day in the near future you will have the radio on in the background as you leave your house to go to work, "there have been many reports of people acting strangely and attacking one another in the downtown core...". But you aren't paying attention as you close the door. Walking to your car, you see your neighbors fighting. One lets off a blood curdling scream. As you approach to help, one of the neighbors swings around and starts lurching toward you, face covered in blood and a strange blank expression on its face as it grits it's teeth. You freeze in fear and confusion, but just before the creature/your neighbor tackles you, out of instinct, you reach for the shovel in the garden, break it in half over your knee, and spear it into the creatures cranium which disables its motor functions. It drops like a stone. With blood rushing through your ears, you run to your car to track down your loved ones....... Good luck to all.
12
@GT Well done. I thought this read as a horror story and could have been much better written as such.
A sobering report on a frightening topic, but as in many NYT articles, most of the photos are superfluous, e.g., “Empty hospital bed at Mt. Sinai.”, which looks a lot like every other empty hospital bed in the First World. Most of us reading this are adults, we are able to read more than a paragraph or two without seeing a picture.
9
@Nyla
I love these beautiful pictures.
To the editor - a small but important factual inaccuracy here: "...leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add it to a list of germs deemed 'urgent threats.'" C. auris is currently deemed a "serious threat", not an "urgent" one - the "urgent" classification is reserved for the most pressing antimicrobial threats, and at the moment only applies to C. diff, CRE, and Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Perhaps Candida will be reclassified soon.
9
This is more disquieting to me than it might have been if I had read it one year ago. In the last year one of my in-laws went to the hospital in another state for a routine procedure, contracted a drug-resistant infection and died from it several weeks later. Then, a couple months ago, a cousin went in for some minor surgery in my state (another town) and contracted MRSA in the operating room. It required 6 weeks of IV antibiotic treatment and freaked out the whole family because of how infectious it was. The hospital tried to downplay the seriousness, but I think they were hugely relieved she responded to the treatment. They would not guarantee us she was infection-free when she finished treatment. They said it would require future testing.
This makes me want to NEVER go to a hospital for treatment.
13
@Madeline Conant
I'm right there with you. I now know four people who've gone in for either rotator cuff surgery or back surgery and ended up with MRSA. One died, the others survived. It makes me want to avoid the hospital entirely.
2
A close relative has been fighting a mysterious and nearly-fatal infection for over a year, after treatment in NJ and PA hospitals. Has a full list of impacted facilities been posted or made available? If so, where?
15
Last month I was told that my uncle and the residents at his assisted-living facility in Anapolis, MD were kept in their rooms for five days without being told the reason. After reading this story I wonder if there was an outbreak of this fungus there.
14
On a related note, frog species world-wide have been declining to the point of extinction. One reason is the fungal disease Chytridiomycosis caused by fungi of the genus Batrachochytrium. I first heard about this 25 years ago, so it has been a concern for longer than that. Frogs have been canaries in coal mines.
We are truly in trouble.
32
I think it’s hugely irresponsible that the hospitals affected are not revealed here, particularly in the case of a neonatal infection. As patients we should be given the ability to make an informed decision about where to seek car for ourselves and especially for an infant. Who will be brave enough to come forward with that information in the face of big hospital money?
18
So it's not just agricultural overuse of antibiotics that needs to be stopped, but also agricultural overuse of pesticides is endangering homo sapiens. Naturally, we also need to stop over-prescribing antibiotics to humans.
19
@Richard Waugaman
ALSO the pipeline to new antibiotics is disturbingly slow - the development and approval process is daunting. And antibiotics do not offer the profit stream of drugs to treat conditions like erectile disfunction, diabetes, high cholesterol and the like. Our governments should subsidize a Manhattan Project like effort to find new generations of antibiotics.
11
@LNK
The federal government often funds the research that leads to new drugs. Then the taxpayer gets none of the profits when the new drug is sold at eye-popping prices.
The tax-payer is often the clueless venture capitalist, funding research that is then exploited by the wealthy.
10
Since the president is a germaphobe, maybe he could inspire the FDA or NIH to invest in antibiotics. It would be the first useful thing he would do in 2 years
2
It isn't so much a mystery, it was reported in our Canterbury District Health Board health alert back on 24 April 2017 here in New Zealand. So it is more a mystery that it wasn't told in the supposedly "best healthcare system in the world".
Bacteria and fungi have a much faster adaptation cycle than humans, so this always was going to be a war we humans were going to lose, but to keep it silent is predictably disappointing.
In fairness to CDC and US hospitals, it is also quite obvious that given the media coverage of SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, and hysteria about the next pandemic to fill the headlines with, that the result will also be a hesitant health care system given how the information on those outbreaks were handled.
If only perspective with respect to actual impact were reported and at the same time hospitals took a more proactive response to notifying like the CDHB in New Zealand did two years ago, we wouldn't have needed an article like this one.
20
Sounds like we can thank a foreign country as usual from starting a serious threat. The earliest known case in the United States involved a woman who arrived at a New York hospital on May 6, 2013, seeking care for respiratory failure. She was 61 and from the United Arab Emirates, and she died a week later, after testing positive for the fungus. Most of the other examples are From people from far away places who came to the US and spread the disease. The "open border"people are the ones who didn't want this story printed.
4
@NYChap What's your suggestion? That we close down the airports, stop imports, never travel abroad and home again, and just wall off the country?
2
The vast majority of the surface of our planet is outside the USA, and the same thing applies in terms of population. Is your solution actually a tighter form of xenophobia than Japan endured for 250 years?
4
@NYChap
Microbes have no awareness of national boundaries or ethnicity. Microbes are also not racist.
Please stop with the anti-immigrant fear mongering, particularly when the US is not even near the top in health programs and administration among first world nations. Our health care system is a disaster and the fact that hospitals and clinics have kept this a secret from patients and their relatives is criminal and needs to stop. We need much more transparency in healthcare in the US.
11
Tony Orlando and Dawn, Candida -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WROdwlk9_h8
2
Health care facilities need to open their windows! OH, the smells and filth I have experienced....Air these places out and fungi won't grow...
10
@Madge
Open a window and you let all manner of microbes and fungi into the facility. Sorry.. this is simply not the right answer to the issue.
And, in spite of some of the anti-immigrant fear mongering by some in the comments section here the real issue is over-use of medications, and the lack of new medications (because the pharmaceutical companies won't research a new medication unless there is extreme profit to be made) to address bateria and fungi adaptation to medications.
It's not rocket science here.... the use of medications, and the extreme sanitizing systems and chemicals in hospitals coupled with the fast adaptation of microorganisms means we will continue to see these sorts of issues come up. Hiding it from the public is just bad health care policy.
11
@Chuck... Nevertheless; health care facilities need to open their windows.....Perhaps if healthy "normal germs" were let in, then the bizarre wouldn't thrive.
3
@Madge
Open windows will also allow the drug resistant microbes to escape into the community.
What would benefit is letting more Sunlight in, NOT opening the windows.
Who made these hospital public relations people God?
-
Health care is supposed to be about supporting patient health, not supporting hospital market share.
Institutions that threaten public health should be identified and the type of threat - whether infection, doctors with a history of malpractice or incompetence, insufficient staff, whatever - made public. Any patient being referred to such an institution should have full disclosure from the referrer.
This protection of a hospital at the expense of its patients is untenable.
36
For those of us who lived through the initial AIDS epidemic, this sounds like deja vu all over again. This has been going on for how many years and we are just reading about it in the NYT? I live in a state next door to both NJ and NY and I cannot be told which hospitals have found this infection at their facilities? Having this week watched the first installments of a new series on Sundance, Unspeakable, that recounts the disaster of contaminated 1980s blood supplies for hemophiliacs and the complicity of the Red Cross, CDC and other governmental agencies in keeping it all secret because they didn't want to alarm anybody, this was definitely not the article I wanted to wake up to on the morning after.
32
Captain Trips, anyone?
3
I fail to see how this is the fault of the current administration. C. auris was identified in ‘09 and has been identified in worldwide outbreaks ever since. It’s easy to blame whoever you like to blame for all the world’s maladies, but this is always how it was gonna play out since the very first dose of penicillin. Maybe it’s playing out a little sooner because of the choices mankind has been making, but all life, whether prokaryotic or eukaryotic, is going to try their darndest to adapt, survive and thrive.
6
@Dan To what reference to "the current administration" are you responding?
4
@eisweino - It was in another comment (not the article), "Trump will declare this fungus a hoax and then continue to shrink the budget for the Center for Disease Control and fill its leadership with toadies."
1
The balance of nature. The microbes will always win.
7
@JoAnne: That's true, and the reason is that microbes are able to evolve genetically much more rapidly than more complex organisms. They're nature's experts at speedy genetic mutation and evolution.
5
@JoAnne
Nature is more about see-saws than balance--every part of the natural world is responding, changing, twitching, shifting, reforming. Much research is just trying to figure out what is happening--why it is happening comes later.
2
@dressmaker - I think of the earth as an organism. When it gets overheated, it kills off a few hundred, thousand, million...just my theory!
3
I feel as if Mother Nature is finding ways to "full the herd.". It's certainly happened before.
1
@Alex
It’s “cull”
1
@Alex
Cull the herd, perhaps?
@Alex
Cull
The meek shall inherit the earth. And we're making it happen faster.
4
@Ron
I dunno. C. Auris seems more aggressive than meek to me.
Most of these antibiotics are manufactured in India and sold to anyone with money. As long as these drugs are sold over-the-counter in third world nations, this problem will only lead to an apocalyptic conclusion.
16
@Creighton Goldsmith quite the xenophobic reflex there. It's startling how immediately this happens these days-- you read a word like "India" or "Saudi" and everyone loses their prefrontal cortexes.
First, antibiotics have nothing to do with fungal infections. Second, the fact that antibiotics are sold OTC in India is only one of the many factors that cause the drug-resistance issue = for example, patients stopping after half the regimen, or using unused portions of previous prescriptions, or even better... feeding antibiotics to animals and then consuming those animals, a practice that the US likely invented.
12
@Sid Kaye
Well stated.
5
@Sid Kaye
I love your statement about the loss of the prefrontal cortex. How true.
They forget that in the US beef cattle are kept in such close proximity and filthy conditions (such beef does not meet EU regulations) requiring the use of antibiotics.
10
It's all about the almighty profit. The cost. Farmers spray pesticides, fungicides, herbicides so they can get a supposedly better yieled per acre. Drug companies won't develop new antimicrobials because of the supposedly high cost of R&D and if there is a market for said drugs. They did this back in late 1990's early 2000's regarding vaccines when they didn't develop new vaccines claiming there wasn't a market for them, then they did it again in the late 2000's regarding antibiotics. They manged to con Congress into giving them more and extended patent protections and research money. All of this is well documented. As for the broad spectrum antiobiotics such a Cipro, we know the dangers but those meds are still on the market and doctors ignore the warnings and still prescribe them like candy. We can thank the Rx companies for their influence on the doctors(perks, gifts, money). We have ourselves to blame for this. Greed. We don't need to worry about WW3, for we are slowly committing suicide by greed, arrogance and stupidty.
36
Plenty of people will still say AIDS is God’s way of punishing sinners, regardless, that is not the lesson we should learn. It is that many people were infected for a year before they knew it. That means, with modern transportation, etc such as it is the whole human population could be infected with a virus before anybody even got sick. We worry about global warming, but something else like a virus might bite us in the rear while we are distracted.
8
I’m an NP. I bucked the anti-education trend of my family & put myself through school. My family used to ask my advice, then completely disregard it because they didn’t like what they heard. My sister has smoked since age 14. She has bronchitis all winter long, since she is forced to smoke outdoors everywhere besides her own home. At a party, she loudly bragged that she refuses to leave her doctor’s office without an Rx.
“I go there, I get a treatment so I can breathe better & I tell him ‘Hand over the script or I’m not leaving.’”
She doesn’t want hear that her illness comes from smoking & it will eventually go away on its own. She just wants to breathe better so she can smoke again, so as far as she’s concerned, her dr had better give her antibiotics, or else.
You may think, “Very few people are that stupid.” Ha. She & her friends are Trump voters. Because they don’t want people telling them what to do & what not to do. They want to be rude & nasty when they feel like it. They want to smoke cigs & they want unimpeded breathing. They want police to “lock her up,” but they want to speed, cheat on taxes, smoke weed, steal from their jobs, have access to drugs without learning about them & then blame big pharma, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, nurses, teachers, etc. Everyone else is wrong, but they’re right because they say so.
This is what we’re up against & its 42% of the population. You can’t tell them anything because, like Trump, they know it all.
99
@Hychkok
I run into a lot of people you described here in the Midwest.
Fortunately, I guess, the 42% are voters who participated in the 2016 election, not people in the US. We need to vote the Cheetoh #45 out of office in 2020. That is, if he does not implode into a pile before then.
6
Ever wonder why evolution theory is so important? It's central to public health policy, i.e., if pathogens don't EVOLVE, no worries, then, eh? The fact is, they DO.
8
@samurai98
Umm, evolution is not a theory, it is the process of movement of gene variants across populations.
2
A “scientific theory” and a conspiracy theory do not use the same definition of the word “theory”. “Gravity” is another example of a “scientific theory”.
I remember watching the FRONTLINE episode on the Nightmare Bacteria and being horrified by it, and one of the cases (of KPC) started right here at Beth-Israel Hospital. I wonder how many readers of The Times remember hearing about that story when it occurred. I don't even recall it being reported by this newspaper although that might not be the case. These are frightening problems facing us and while we need to address it and learn more about them, the more I learn the more nervous I become.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/hunting-the-nightmare-bacteria/
8
Mother Nature is going to have the final word on human lack of respect for the environment.
751
@inter nos Your are absolutely right. We all should just remember, cockroaches have been around for 300 or more millions of years and who knows how long some of the fungi, viruses and bacteria have been around. I am sure lot of living things and microorganism will outlive humans. I will not be surprised if humans will eventually succumb to some of these new and hardier strains of bacteria, viruses and fungi.
26
They should CRISPR some genes into it to make it glow. If it's out of control, figure out where it lives outside of hospitals, and give it glow genes to track and learn about it in the wild.
167
@T
In many cases, it is within the medical facilities that resistant strains first mutate into a resistance profile.
A hospital is the mother of all selection environments for microbes looking to mutate against medications and cleaning agents.
26
@T
If they can make it glow, couldn't they, instead, make it incapable of reproducing?
24
@Faustina
That's not how it works. They would create their own specimen and release it to observe it, allowing it to survive in order to deduce strategies against it. Scientists cannot magically manipulate already-existing strains of fungus in the wild.
19
My microbiology professor told us that we were at war with the microbes. It was a war we could not win. We wouldn't lose today, tomorrow, or the next day. But eventually, the microbes would take us as individuals and as a species. The older I get, the more evidence there is that he was absolutely correct. This isn't science fiction, it's science fact.
13
@Mike
If that were the case there would no multicelled animals or plants. It is not science fact, it is fiction.
@Mike.....It is not in the best interest of bacteria, fungi, or viruses to kill you. After all, if you are dead you won't be walking around spreading their genes.
@Mike
Yes, I think you're right. They will quickly take us down because we are out of balance with the ecosystem. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.
We've gone beyond a sustainable homeostasis and are what's called a cheat organism. We received too much of a benefit compared to what we give back.
Kind of like what rich people do to us.
Who will say No? The drug manufacturer? The doctor? The patient? The local pharmacy? The on line pharmacy? The veterinarian? The farmer? The pet owner? The CDC? The slaughterhouse? The food retailer? The individual satisfaction is too much to refuse. As a veterinarian in private practice I ordinarily do not send my patients home with antibiotics post op, but many of my colleagues do. Indiscriminate use of any drug can have all kinds of morbidity, and it takes time to explain why we will just observe our patient rather than immediately treat with medication, any medication. But the issue is similar, except that while there may be adverse individual reactions to drugs, unfocused antibiotic use is a community affair. Doctors will always, insofar as possible, use a particular antibiotic to treat a particular bacteria or group of bacteria. There is no issue of one being stronger than another. If it’s effective, than it’s the correct decision. But using broad spectrum antibiotics for an empirically identified bacteria, where precision could otherwise be chosen, is bad medicine. Additionally the drug must be used based on many considerations, like which tissue is infected, how long might the infection take to resolve, the condition of the patient, if a bacterial culture and sensitivity was done, if the infection is accessible, cost, etc. With this understanding it becomes obvious that just to take a drug based on a vague suspicion of infection or because a friend did is a bad idea.
12
My immune system is compromised due to a bimonthly biologic I receive to treat an autoimmune disease. If I contract this, just give me palliative care, keep me well supplied with Morphine and Ativan, and let me go.
11
@Nora
You will do fine, unless something catastrophic happens, and that is quite uncommon.
Most infections and such will clear if the drug is stopped, and the immune system can reconstitute itself.
1
@Nora
Can I have your car?
1
In addition to overuse of antibiotics and fungicides, climate change will in some areas give pathogenic microorganisms a selective advantage. This could happen when climate disruption causes temperature changes, the growth or death of flora and fauna and the mass migration of plant and animal species including humans.
Controlling the spread of C. auris may be a bellwether of things to come.
16
We seem to be back in the 13th-14th centuries when ships spread the bubonic plague.
Perhaps besides the widespread use of wonder drugs the widespread popular migration of folks trying to escape political havoc is adding to this new plague.
Years ago the New Yorker magazine had an article about two ranchers, one American and his visitor a rancher from Central America. The visitor accompanied the host to a doctor’s visit. The American was having a blood test. As this was an unusual idea to the visitor the doctor asked whether he too would like a blood test. The visitor replied yes.
The American's test was the usual: a little too much of this too little of that, but otherwise normal. The visitor's was a complete surprise as it revealed what for typical Americans would be a pathologically disastrous amount of microbial life. The visitor was otherwise in apparent robustly good health.
This begs the obviou question of whether we are receiving too much of a good thing and therefore saving more lives but making those lives more vulnerable?
4
Those commentators who are putting this down to migration from undeveloped countries have not read the article. It seems to be coming from the overuse of fungicides by our chemicalized industrial agriculture. “Dr. Chiller theorizes that C. auris may have benefited from the heavy use of fungicides. His idea is that C. auris actually has existed for thousands of years, hidden in the world’s crevices, a not particularly aggressive bug. But as azoles began destroying more prevalent fungi, an opportunity arrived for C. auris to enter the breach, a germ that had the ability to readily resist fungicides now suitable for a world in which fungi less able to resist are under attack.”
22
@Francesca
Yet the worldwide movement of people and goods is also a factor. This does not mean only "migrants": all travelers, all cargo transportation are adding to the threat.
And this concerns not only bacteria and fungus, but other species as well. The asian hornet, for instance, is an invasive species in France, probably coming from China.
It's not racism, it's science and facts. There have been many examples in History. For instance, the American Indians were killed not only by Europeans, but also by the diseases they imported, for which indigeneous populations had no immune defenses.
Now, of course, there are other factors as well, and the overuse of antibiotics and antifungi is another important cause.
Another likely factor in the future: climate change, both by changing termperature and humidity levels in many regions, and possibly by "waking up" ancient diseases hidden in ice.
We will lose in so many ways.
2
@Francesca
I agree with you that the use of chemicals is what the author tried to blame it on. But it was a weak and misleading argument made in an attempt to make the problem align with the author's political preferences. Globalization has benefits and costs. This is one of the costs. Pretending it isn't is dishonest and not helpful.
Great article. Definitely high-lights to the need for more transparency so the public is informed and resources can be marshalled to fight and prevent potential outbreaks. The fact that hospitals are fearful of announcing outbreaks that could harm their reputations (and cashflow) reminds me of the Catholic Church hiding pedophile priests to protect the institution from criticism and lawsuits. Addressing the issue early on will lead to a faster solution. Waiting will have more severe consequences.
7
A few thoughts:
1. MOST Candida is commensal NOT infection. Probably true of Candida auris too. More a marker of extreme debility than the cause. Too soon to panic.
2. As Dr. Johanna Rhodes points out: "We are driving this with the use of antifungicides [sic] on crops." Not so much misuse of antimicrobials, despite the ID scolds.
3. I wonder if the future of hospital care isn't to "bring the hospital to the patient." Why jam all the sickest, most infected people together in one building? Send portable equipment and personnel to their homes. There are many obstacles to this but it might be fruitful. We tend to be heading that way anyway.
16
@epistemology
Traffic congestion, hello?
Poor infrastructure that will complicate logistics, too.
Most Americans don't live in nice, comfortable apartments with spacious lobbies, accessible elevators, door-staff, good lighting and room to maneuver hospital equipment. Get a grip on reality.
2
@Maria Ashot
This is a fantastic paradigm shift and not as complicated or impossible as you think. Spacious lobbies? Elevators? Door staff? How many of us have those anyway? I'll take my tiny home space over being in a hospital any day. Love the concept!
1
The emergence of resistant strains of C. difficile in patients needing broad spectrum antibiotics is another frightening example. But in the laboratory, under controlled conditions, toxins have been used for decades to select resistant strains in order to study biochemical mechanisms of action. It’s been observed all along that resistant strains that emerge are usually less hardy than the starting population. So for generations now we’ve been running uncontrolled experiments on Mother Earth (extensions of agriculture, of course) - but shouldn’t we know when to stop or modify the experiment??
6
Several years ago, I read about a UV machine that sterilized hospital rooms far better than even the most diligent human, because its rays could reach places a human couldn’t. They’re quite pricey ($100K) and requires up to 30 minutes to sterilize a room, which the hospital industry claims is too costly, but I’d think far cheaper than iatrogenic infections. Ahhh, but insurance pays for treating infections, not the UV machines.
I’ve also noticed that whenever I question a doctor wanting to prescribe antibiotics, I’m met with patronizing judgment. When I had bronchitis two years ago, I only wanted a steroid shot to stop the incessant coughing, but my doctor insisted on an antibiotic and oral steroids. I skipped the antibiotic and healed well on the steroid. I understand antibiotics are sometimes required, as when I had a dental implant — infection is the number one reason they fail — but I view them as reserve players, not first-line defenses.
7
@Frolicsome
Radiation is line-of-sight. Not sure how it would work in shaded crevices, unless by reflection, which would be more than a little haphazard. The diffusive peroxide aerosol seems more effective in principle.
6
@Frolicsome
Steroids for bronchitis?
Get a decent cough suppressant, spend some time resting in bed, drink lots of fluids and use steam (or a steamy shower, or a basic inhalation set up consisting of a towel draped around a pot of freshly boiled water with perhaps some herbs or essential oils such as eucalyptus, menthol, oreganol...).
Steroids are harmful. Bronchitis can be treated, but you have to put some effort into it.
Manhattan has a wonderful clinic for respiratory infections, by the way. It's called Totum. Look them up. Pricey, but worth it.
Excellent article, and very nice video. I do wish that your copy editor had caught the absurd word "antifungicides"-- you may have antifungal chemicals, and you may have the same thing and call them fungicides, but an anti-fungicide might be something that would fight the effect of fungicides/ antifungals.
8
This piece is Pulitzer Prize material.
4
@Laurel S
Minimally, a mention in Fungus Monthly.
3
To all of you Chicken Littles: Thousands of children die of dehydration due to diarrhea everyday. Now. And all of you are worried about what might happen in the future. You are all just drama queens who are being led by the nose by the media. You know and care nothing about the world. This is all just entertainment for you, a horror flick that is all the more exciting because it has some basis in reality. Do you want to really be scared? Check out the reality that is really happening right now.
3
@Thomas Guess what? We can be concerned with both, and deal with both, at the same time. It's not an either/or situation.
22
@Thomas
What can I do to hydrate someone else's child?
I am here to learn something that will help my own offspring, manage their own health, my grandson's and -- in due course -- mine & their father's.
And that is plenty. Well aware of all the 'reality'; not much more that I can do for it than I already do.
God bless Melinda and Bill Gates. They are doing something for those suffering children.
1
This morning, while reading this over my breakfast, I thought back to a story from July 3, 1981, which I researched and found was on Page A20 of The NY Times that day. The first paragraph: “Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made.” While today’s news may (or may not) be the next AIDS crisis, I wonder how we’ll react this time? Governments taking their time, not causing a panic, “nothing to see here”?
11
@Mark H I read that same article on the same day in the same newspaper in 1981. Because I was aware of it so early, I always followed the diseases progress with considerable interest, primarily because I worked in urban hospitals. Scary...
@Mark H
And here we are 39 years later. People who have the HIV virus die of old age! Talk about progress!
Why is Dr Shawn Lockhart not wearing gloves?
2
@MZ Because the fungus is dead, read the caption (inactivated = dead)
Yikes.
4
So what are we going to do about it?? Apparently we can't even agree that Roundup causes cancer - it absolutely does - and we've known for years that overuse of antibiotics is dangerous, yet we keep doing it.
Hell, we can't even agree that climate change is a global threat. Until we stop demonizing science and experts, people are going to keep dying. At some point it'll be too late to do anything.
31
@Barb - At some point, more than likely in the next 20-30 years, I will die no matter what. At this point in my life, I get far more stressed out if I wake up and discover I am out of chocolate syrup for morning lattes than about some virus that is supposed be lurking, waiting to get me.
Measles, chickenpox, and mumps didn't kill me as a kid but gave me time out of school. I have lived with HIV for 18 years now. My heart has stopped a couple of times during epileptic seizures. Neurologists prescribed drugs that made me suicidal. I even tried a few times. Yet, for whatever reason, here I am.
What scares me medically is diabetes. I look at all of the Americans around me with that god-awful disease and their complications and I have often said, "Thank you Lord that I have epilepsy and not diabetes. Please forgive me for complaining about my problems".
2
@Barb"Apparently we can't even agree that Roundup causes cancer - it absolutely does"; OK. You apparently are aware that a number of independent investigators disagree about the level of danger from getting cancer from the active chemical in roundup. But no matter; you apparently have a special insight beyond such investigations, cutting right through the Gordian knot of difficulties inherent in judging carcinogenicity of substances that may or may not have so minimal safe dose and using animal models to judge human problems. You just KNOW. What is it tipped you off? That it was a chemical with a long scary name? That it was sold by a chemical company that *gasp* made a profit with it?
2
@tom harrison
If you are afraid of diabetes, why the chocolate syrup?
2
As this threat lums large, our national administration insists that immigration poses our greatest danger.
8
@Dee Hoover You might want to note that this didn't start with Trump.
When the billionaires' and millionaires' children get sick something will be done.
14
"Health officials say that disclosing outbreaks frightens patients about a situation they can do nothing about, particularly when the risks are unclear."
*Who* can do nothing about it? Health officials may be helpless, but patients certainly could help themselves by going elsewhere for treatment. And they *absolutely should* have that option, which is only possible with knowledge of where the outbreaks are occurring.
14
Diseases will win because evolution will adapt faster than our medical science can keep up.
Multi-culturalism turns out to have an evil side: allowing the spread of fatal diseases, much like the wiping out of the native populations when the Europeans arrived.
8
@David..."Diseases will win because evolution will adapt faster than our medical science can keep up."....Which explains why there are now 7 billion people in the world; or is it 9 billion
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/A_Novel_Representation_Of_The_Tree_Of_Life.png
Bacteria may overtake many other living things.
That graphic might change a lot.
Bacteria, at least some bacteria, must be thought of as having apex predator status.
4
fabulous article, new york times at its best. wish politicians would read this. wish the policy think-tanks would read this. wish the biotech wizards would read this.
10
Now just wait for the agro-chemical industry to insist that their products have absolutely nothing to do with this problem.
16
Human beings are clever, but exceedingly greedy, little animals.
We are becoming a dominate amount of the overall biomass.
And as such a rich source of food for predatory pathogens.
We will continue to overuse pesticides and fungicides.
We will continue to overuse antibiotics. We shall see how clever
we are in developing new defenses. But we will never stop being
exceedingly greedy.
4
I was studying & working in NYC hospitals during the AIDS epidemic when a classmate told of a meeting she’d attended at the city’s largest, best known public hospital. Administrators were hearing pleas to open an AIDS unit in their hospital for delivering care to & teaching staff how to care for AIDS patients.
The administrators said no. Though a public hospital, it was part of a prestigious university hospital system & its medical school. Open an AIDS floor & the hospital would become known as an “AIDS hospital.” Since AIDS was still relatively rare in parts of the US & the rest of the world, it would have a negative effect on the medical school & domestic & international residency program. Students wouldn’t want attend med school or do a residency in an “AIDS hospital.’
Sadly, they were right. A small, private hospital was rebranded an AIDS hospital & though it was lauded, it closed down. Nobody wanted to be affiliated with a “plague.”
Look at the comments here & you’ll see are people canceling surgery after reading this article. Is it any wonder hospitals keep these things quiet? A renowned private hospital i worked at had developed its own super infection. CDC used to come in secretly to talk to our infection control specialists. It’s one of those situations where you used to hear Lenny Briscoe on Law & Order say “The press will have field day.”
When it comes to hospitals & infections, the press does have a field day & people panic
6
As we know using multiple drugs prevents germs from becoming resistant because two mutations in one germ are orders of magnitude less likely to happen. But this is not a profitable business model because germs adapting and expiring [patents] provide a gravy train, while new drugs can be developed, ...until they can't.
1
At the risk of sounding ungrateful, what is the standard procedure in developing nations for invasive microbial prevention?
The stiff institutional silence on outbreaks fo C. auris reminded me that the Chinese government was widely condemned, after-the-fact, for covering up the emergence of the SARS virus in the early 2000s. It was true in 1987; it's true today; and it will be true: Silence = Death.
10
This article is misleading because it confuses and conflates fungi with bacteria. Antibiotics have little effect on fungal infections as they target bacteria. Bacteria and fungi are completely different organisms (one is a prokaryote and the other is a eukaryote). So the drugs that target these microorganisms are completely different classes of chemicals. Yet the tone of this article is that widespread antibiotic use has led to the rise of this “secret” new fungal infection, which is incorrect. I am disappointed that this article was published without appropriate scientific input to explain differences between bacteria and fungi, and the drugs used to treat these. Although it is true that we are struggling with increasing antibiotic-resistant bacteria and potentially antifungal resistant fungi, this article is strongly alarmist and does not serve public awareness effectively. This only feeds the panic and distrust that the public already has for the medical profession, and drives more unsuspecting individuals into the hands of the grossly profiteering alternative medicine market.
6
@Paige Lacy
You misread the article. It compares the two issues, but makes clear that it was overuse of fungicides, not antibiotics, that caused this issue.
8
@Paige Lacy That was precisely my thought, too. Fungi are not bacteria - and lumping both together as "germs" dumbs down the article substantially.
3
This is why I object to the article. It’s too easy to misread when it lumps all fungi and bacteria under the umbrella term of “germs” (which is in itself misleading).
3
"With bacteria and fungi alike, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs. Even the C.D.C., under its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks."
Outrageous and morally repugnant!
This is a serious violation of the patients' right of Totally Adequate Informed Consent, which requires full disclosure of any relevant information that might influence patients' decisions.
With their own interests which differ from yours, the rulers cannot be trusted to enforce the rights to which we are all entitled, placing the burden on us to enforce our rights.
Health care vs powerful profit-making medical businesses -- we know where the rulers stand -- however, the vastly more important question for you and yours is where do you stand?
10
An accompanying article states that U.S. health authorities don't want to scare people unnecessarily. I guess that's why the New York Times has it as their lead article in at least the online edition!
And of course, the first case mentioned, happened in Brooklyn!
4
Maybe they came out of the hidden crevices because it is slightly warmer now
7
@AF Excellent & scary thought;we've seen the photos of what climate change is already doing, but so much more is probably happening that we don't know or recognize.
Apparently death is teleologically sound in the wake of global warming & drug resistant bacteria. Is there just too many of us? Or is it how many of us and nations first that will hunt us down?
1
Check out the research of Dr Mahmoud Ghannoum at Case Western School of Medicine. He published a study on a drug with efficacy against C Auris. He’s also the scientist that named the mycobiome, the body’s fungal community
6
It is the new Ebola, which was supposed to kill us all last time? What ever happened to the Africanized honey bees? Or is the Boeing 737's and their screwy software that will get us? In reality, we are all hundreds times more likely to die from simply driving to the market or slipping in the tub. Promoting a culture of fear is what the media has always been good at.
3
@Paulo
So should this disease not be reported on, because it might scare people?
2
@Paulo Don't see this as a culture of fear, but rather a culture of information;choosing silence or ignorance like this WH is what should be feared.
4
Medical authorities tend to forget that the greatest life-saving discoveries in healthcare are the weekly day of rest and low-cost public health practices, not the modern medical interventions with shiny gadgets that serve almost as product placements in Hollywood movies. If every success in healthcare requires our cooperation with our understanding of nature, not our arms race against it, then we are living on borrowed time if we persist in the illusion that our ever-increasing innovative slash-and-burn techniques against microbes in our ecosystems. Could it be time to reevaluate the very foundation on which our dominant healthcare practices rest?
6
I try to stay way from drugs so when I do need them they work. People are too wimpy these days and even if they get discomfort like, hayfever, they rush off to buy tablets, instead of just putting up with it. I blame advertising and drug marketing for brainwashing families. Never had that when I was young, approx. 60 years ago.
I bet people who don't take drugs until really necessary find the drugs work on them to fight germs. Maybe they should try that type of research but that wouldn't be in the interest of the drug companies and their profits.
I find Thursday Plantation pure Tea Tree oil is great for everything. Stops bleeding, if you sniff it cold clear up, and it purifies the air if you leave a bottle with the cap off in a room.
There's lots of old fashioned remedies that worked 100 years ago. Public being brainwashed by marketing companies.
279
@CK
Don't forget that 100 years ago, life expectancy in the US was about 50 years.
58
nonsense. An acquaintance went into a New York City Hospital 4 a simple surgery for a ingrown toenail and left without his foot and his lower leg. This was as a result of a necrotizing E coli bacterial infection. Nostrums from a hundred years ago do nothing against a problem we have NOW. Rubbing tea oil on my acquaintance's foot would have had the same non-effect.
63
@CK Staying away from drugs doesn't make the bugs that may infect you any less drug resistant. You were just lucky so far.
86
It's my understanding that wines, as long as they don't use pesticides, are allowed to use fungicides and still call themselves "organically grown." Is this true?
2
This and similar threats are increasing because the public, including those in the farming and food processing industries, are totally unaware of how their behaviors contribute to the rise of "superbugs".
"the problem [...] is little understood by the public."
This is so, because fewer people in the public absorb even a basic high school level of science. Basic rudimentary knowledge of biology is lacking in most people, of how microscopic living organisms exist everywhere. They flourish because we let them, and when we kill-off their natural competition. Use of antimicrobial soaps and hand sanitizers promote this serious problem, with so many companies selling them and people frequently using them.
There are good bacteria/fungi, and there are pathogens (the bad ones). If you kill off the good ones, by using hand sanitizers, it leaves room on our hands for the bad ones to grow. Our hands and bodies are normally covered in good bacteria - it is a normal part of life. Yet when we sanitize our skin, our barren skin becomes a lush warm environment for all surviving pathogens to take root and multiply - and get passed on via doorknobs, sneezes, handshakes, pens, keypads, benches, etc.
Also, when healthy people get a "cold" or "flu", they rarely NEED antibiotics. Their bodies will easily recover without help. Antibiotics will simply reduce the duration of unpleasant symptoms, however that antibiotic course endangers all of us.
Please do not ask your doctor for antibiotics.
13
@IN
Actually, antibiotics won’t do anything for colds and flus, as they’re viruses. Definitely don’t take them for those illnesses.
3
Antibiotics do not help with colds AT ALL. They’re viral infections. The cold gets better on its own, but meanwhile the antibiotic gets the credit.
1
It makes perfect sense that the overuse of antibiotics would lead to resistance. But this argument is coupled with a convenient shift of responsibility onto the consumer. When do we demand some action on the massive abuse of pesticides on our food crops and antibiotics on livestock?
Colony collapse disorder has been traced to a fungus that has been further traced to neonicotinoids, which are also found in about every consumer gardening product. Most of the antibiotics used in farming end up not just in our food but profoundly in manure and ultimately in surface water where microbes evolve resistance. The stuff is being pumped into our environment everywhere.
But our politicians seem to think economics is more important. Lately it's a free-fpr-all; some great new rush to deregulate these industries even more (pork this week thanks to #45). All for a few pennies of extra profit. People and whole populations of animals (see: white-nose fungal syndrome) will die.
10
Multi drug resistant organisms are not a new thing for those of us that work in infectious disease. It is more newsworthy to call c.auris a "mysterious fungus" but there's nothing mysterious about resistant bugs. There is also nothing mysterious about one of the contributors to their existence - antimicrobial over use. We can all do our part by not insisting our doctors give us antibiotics for a "cold' or "congestion" & curbing and narrowing the spectrum with our antimicrobial prescribing.
14
Those organic folks were correct. Here's another example of the effect of our food choices on the environment and the effect of the environment on our health.
14
@S Baldwin If so, why did it seem to come from places that aren't exactly first world.
2
@David
1. The first case was in Japan, a first word country.
2. They don’t know where it came from.
3. Non-first world countries also use fungicides.
4
@S Baldwin No, they aren't correct. Organic uses fungicides.
And manure might be part of the problems. https://www.nature.com/news/manure-fertilizer-increases-antibiotic-resistance-1.16081
Imagine if we expanded that (while simultaneously losing yield).
1
I slipped out of a golf cart las spring and landed full body face down requiring facial stitches and limb stitches and also got a surprise bacteria that took our local CDC doctor to find a medicine forI was ill at home for 4 days and started getting blood poisoning so I went to the hospital for 6 days. It took them that long to figure it out and what I could take. I am one of the lucky ones. my friend is called NOCARDIA BRASSILIENSIS AND THE CULTURE FOR ID MYCOBACTERIUM. I LIVE IN SOUTHERN LOUISIANA NOT IN A JUNGLE OR A PLACE IN ASIA. I need to take these pills the rest of my life.
14
After reading this article, I can't help but feel despair over the state of critical thinking and science education in this country. We have millions who think that evolution and natural selection, the basis of all cutting edge biological and medical research, are a hoax. And millions more who believe that vaccines cause all sorts of maladies as they simultaneously indulge in the fantasies purveyed by holistic medicine. Yet it is science that will find the solutions to problems like drug resistance pathogens, and vaccines or vaccine like delivery systems will in or probability be part of those solutions.
Only an educated public can force through the political decisions that need to be made to address the overuse of antibodies and anti-fungal drugs, but I don't see that public out there. All I see is the continued ascendancy of magic thinking.
46
@mather And what about the unconscionable ascendancy of for-profit hospitals HIDING an outbreaks to protect their business? An educated public will also need to come accept the reality that medicine and science are industries. They are big business, and are willing to sacrifice their patients to protect their bottom line. Wake up.
5
I don’t disagree with your conclusion but do you see the irony in your analysis? Science, medicine and big pharma are the forces pushing for the wide spread use of anti fungals and Antibacterial on farm animals who are largely responsible for spreading this disease. Big Pharma created these drugs and claimed that medicine and science supported their safety and efficacy. Now the Medicine and science they claim supported their widespread use is warning of the the threat.
6
@mather
I know, I know, but the way I am seeing this is a bit skewed.
In many of these types of articles I read comments about 'why isn't government doing anything?" Sadly the abdication of the current administration to address anything resembling the poisoning of the earth only highlights two things:
That we used to be able to expect/rely on our government to have a modicum of concern for the well being of the citizenry and that we are going to have to take on more at a personal and state level.
It's astounding to me how much free time we used to have before destruction was standard operating proceedure.
7
The time is past for the general public to feel "sad" or to lament the way things used to be. It is our responsibility. The government is us. Therefore, we toss out the incompetents, provide incentives for smart folks to do government work and put science and not profit as the measure by which we make policies.
We cannot wring out hands and tut tut this administration or any other that does not act in the public interest and uphold its obligation to the public trust. That means we investigate wrongdoing, impeach if necessary and vote at every level and/or run for office ourselves. It is not someone else's job.
4
@Michelle Teas the solutions cant only come from government incentives and controls. we need capitalists to design products the public needs and wants. I think this is neither a republican nor democrat problem, it should be a bipartisan concern
@jeannene
Capitalists design nothing and health care and capitalism are oil and water.
There seems to be a lot of ignorance about farming here. I'm not a farmer but I've lived almost all of my life among farmers, including most of my extended family.
Farmers don't spray fungicides (or any herbicides or pesticides) unless there is fungus that needs to be controlled. Not only the cost of the chemicals, but also the cost of the application (especially aerial) come out of their profit. But fungal diseases can destroy entire crops, and spread to other farms if not treated.
Organic does not = safe. There are a lot of 'organic' treatments and sprays that are at least as dangerous as 'chemical' treatments. Copper and manganese are allowed for treating fungus on organic crops, and are both toxic and persistent. Changing to organic is probably beneficial and possible for fruits and vegetables, but for grains, soybeans, oil crops, it is too labor intensive to actually feed the country/world with.
Not all large farms are 'corporate' farms. My neighbor for many years farms close to 2000 acres with his son and one hired man, and that's not unusual here. This area is pretty much just grain and row crops since the soil is too good to waste in pasture and feed crops.
Which brings me to the point of noting that animal agriculture (which does need to change in many ways) has nothing to do with this article. Fungus is not bacteria.
13
@Amoret Perhaps, but meat producers have given antibiotics as a preventative measure for decades.
2
@Amoret
Farmers of chickens, pigs and cattle also milk cows have systematically dosed their animals with hormones and ANTIBIOTICS for years.
1
@David
But this is a fungus, not bacteria, and meat production problems have nothing to do with it. Those antibiotics do affect the problems with resistant bacteria, but that is a completely different issue.
1
The article is troubling because it repeatedly commingles “germs” (which are bacteria) and fungi, which aren’t bacteria at all. There are legitimate grounds to be concerned about developing drug resistance among infectious agents, but if the cited stats of 2,000,000 infections and 23,000 fatalities are correct the fatality rate is a little over 1% I wouldn’t want to be one of the 1% but among the overall outcomes of serious infections of immune compromised people, a 1% fatality rate doesn’t look quite so bad.
This is a public health problem to be managed accordingly. I don’t think it was helpful to be frightening people over something they will almost certainly not encounter and about which they could do nothing anyway.
6
@Chris Craddock " all the dictionaries I checked include fungi among the organisms described as "germs." And the gist of the article is that resistant pathogens are rapidly increasing worldwide, so the current 1% fatality rate is only the canary in the coal mine.
3
@Linda Stephenson - Interesting. I don't usually think of Shitake mushrooms as a germ and I do everything I can to encourage beneficial fungi in my garden.
Thank you for this report and the excellent video. Something has to be done to change American attitudes towards this extreme serious problem.
3
Everything was fine on earth until technology came along.
OK, that, and the occasional large meteorite.
Humans are no more important to the welfare of the earth than the dinosaurs or any other animal at the top of the food chain. Indeed, the critters near the base of the food chain are much more important to the earth's ecosystem since they feed everything above them. Humans are just eaters, just users of everything below them. Humans don't give back to the earth value, they only consume.
Perhaps the waste we create will be used by the tiniest critters and the change in climate will benefit certain species, and life on earth will change its composition.
Never forget, creatures at the top of the food chain consume more than they produce, while many others below them produce more than they consume. That said, there's more of them than there are of us, and technology can only hold them off for so long before all the little critters consume us for lunch.
To all the little bugs out there: "Let them eat technology."
9
@Chris
Best friends, right?
This article & press like the NYT are essential for high standards in public health. Thank you to the times for writing this piece and placing it front and center on Saturday morning. As an avid gardener in the northeast US, I want to suggest that anyone who opposes the use of chemicals in agriculture to please create a large vegetable garden as a way of understanding the complex opposing interests at play in commercial agriculture. I have a 1000sqft garden and each year grow a variety of vegetables, herbs and fruit. I started doing this after deciding several years ago that everyone should grow their own food as rebellion against the agriculture industry and commercial farming that, I believed, was killing us.
What I have learned is too voluminous to post here. But I will say that i now have an appreciation for the possibly toxic safety net provided by modern commercial agriculture. From entire squash beds ruined by insects I can’t even see until they’ve already destroyed my plants, to large thriving basil plants also decimated by insects as early as July 1. To a variety of fungus and then of course other animals eating my family’s bounty.... I have experienced it all through my adventures in organic farming that is now just sort of organic.
One final note- serious gardening will turn even hardened vegans in to claw trap setting lunatics who sit watch over their garden with a BB gun (because a real gun would obviously be crazy). Sympathy for Bambi’s mother evaporates....
5
@A-ok -- You started gardening several years ago and your garden has become overrun by pests in your initial effort to garden organically. Please accept the assertion that there is a very high-level of professional expertise required to garden and farm that cannot be developed in a few years, and that you may have thought incorrectly that gardening organically is a more simple affair than it really is.
Crop rotation confuses plant-specific pests from year to year, companion planting causes pests to go elsewhere from their favorite foods because the companion plant is intolerable to them, proper cover cropping and nurturing the soil is the most important thing a farmer can do to create a healthy environment for the flora to thrive.
To be clear, a true organic farmer does not farm the plants, they farm the soil and the biota in the soil are their livestock. I consider myself a dirt farmer, that is mostly what I farm. Technically speaking, I'm a livestock farmer and there just happens to be healthy plants everywhere. On top of all this is the seed saving selected from a diverse array of plants that successfully thrived from year to year: just buying seeds is not selecting them yourself for their hardiness and health in your garden.
It used to be that one grew up farming with generations of experience, today, that is not the case and learning how to farm successfully is a long past heritage that too few have held onto. Sorry for your losses.
11
@A-ok - I started learning about growing when grandpa put me on a tractor when I was five years old. He grew about 600 acres of corn and soybeans in the midwest from about the 40's till the end of the century.
After that, mom taught me how to grow awesome tomatoes using nothing but eggshells and coffee grounds.
And through the years I have watched everything Martha Stewart has ever done and thought I was pretty good at gardening.
Then, I got involved with a few people in Seattle that owned medical marijuana dispensaries and got one heck of an education on organic and hydroponic growing. These old school medical pot growers are the fussiest I have met yet. While grandpa would reach for DEET to deal with bugs, they set up lady bug colonies in their grow tents or get a praying mantis. They might use Neem oil but many don't want to taste it on their crop later. Their methods work.
After growing my own medical indoors for a decade, I decided to clear out a front closet and ordered some more lights so I can start growing produce. I had Jalapeno peppers and lettuce growing with the cannabis last winter so its time to expand. And time for a pet preying mantis:)
But like you, it took a long, long time for me to learn to identify root aphids vs. fungus gnats, damping off, powdery mildew, etc. But picking orange Jalapenos in the closet in the dead of winter sure made all of the study worth it:)
1
To add insult to injury:
"In 2014, U.S. officials imposed a moratorium on experiments to enhance some of the world’s most lethal viruses by making them transmissible by air, responding to widespread concerns that a lab accident could spark a global pandemic...given that these proposed experiments intended to create a highly contagious flu virus that could spread among humans, the government concluded the work should not go on...Apparently, the government has decided the research should now move ahead."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-is-funding-dangerous-experiments-it-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about/2019/02/27/5f60e934-38ae-11e9-a2cd-307b06d0257b_story.html?utm_term=.fe288cfc4b0e
5
Don't laugh, but could the fungus have come from outer space? Something like a real life "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
2
@Dr. OutreAmour Well, it might have been returned to our planet by a meteorite, or satellite or whatever, China, India, Russia, or USA bring back into our atmosphere after their launches into space. That's something no one has probably thought about. Good suggestion!
2
Why should it have? Doesn’t seem like the most plausible explanation.
Wonderful opportunity for this and similar commenters here to educate the rest of us re the psychological motivations of persons who engage in the practice of fiddling while Rome burns. The original fiddler is now long, so we can’t ask them.
The fundamental issue not discussed in this article is the same issue that affects all aspects of regulation and governance in America. As a species, Americans are no different than the other billions of people who walk planet earth, it’s our system of government that has failed us.
The common root of all evil is unfettered capitalism and pervasive human greed that feeds off it. When corporations, such as Amazon, are allowed to enjoy America’s bounty but pay NOTHING in tax, unfettered capitalism no longer serves 320 million Americans. When 70% of a congressman’s job is fund raising, there is scant time left for oversight. When Citizen’s United was approved by the supreme court, that set in motion the complete purchase and sale of representative government.
America has walked over a cliff which has no staircase back to safety. When someone like Trump, who has NO experience in governance, is suspected of numerous crimes, is being investigated by 17 difference agencies, but nevertheless remains in office, America’s demise is within view.
13
Or we could shift our perspective and view drug-resistant pathogens as the planet's immune system kicking into high gear to eradicate its own life-threatening infection...us.
14
@NT
Speaking of immunity we still can only guess why some have it & some don't. This, to me, is the future of medicine.
What I know for sure: managing stress better, getting enough sleep & avoiding stuff hard for the body to process.
The only hope for the planet is for Mother Nature to kill off the out of control human race. Maybe then will all the other living breathing creatures and plants on this earth have a fighting chance. We will surely wipe them out in our unceasing greed and avarice if the current state of affairs is allowed to go on, and I sincerely hope we are stopped. If we can’t recognize what we are doing and stop it ourselves, than I hope it is some massive global virus that does us all in. The human race concocted a god and now it’s acting as its self-anointed prophet of destruction. Human kind doesn’t deserve to inherit the earth.
8
And you thought China's former "Once Child Policy" was the only solution.
2
A fungus so tenacious, impervious to major antifungal medications. And the photo shows the clinician holding the slide in a gloveless hand. Get a grip and be a good role model. We teach students the first order of business in a lab is to glove.
5
@Em "Dr. Shawn Lockhart, a fungal disease expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, holding a microscope slide with inactive Candida auris collected from an American patient."
note "inactive"
2
@Em, The photo was clearly captioned, saying the slide was of the killed fungus.
1
@@ ManhattanWilliam
Still, I doubt at Fort Detrick they handle dead biotoxins without gloves.
1
What I really want to know is how the CDC and affected hospitals have let this go on son long without finding a foolproof way of decontaminating rooms and equipment?
You don't want to talk about it? Fine. But figure out how to kill it where it stands, short of taking a blowtorch to it.
4
How, in a nation which wants to disbelieve science and common sense, are we going to address such as multi-pronged problem?
I can hear it now: “Fake news!”
It scares the heck out of me that trump wastes his time tilting windmills, while the real problems multiply exponentially.
8
@TheraP, what really scares the heck out of me is now in the face of everything else wrong with everything else all the Democrats want to do is waste their time still getting Trump’s tax returns for the last six years. Where is the common sense in that? One can bear a grudge only so far. I just don’t think they care about anything else anymore which makes me wonder what good are they for anything? Even if they could win an election.
@John Doe Kind of like that useless costly wall, no?
1
there's fungus among us! ...and do what we may...what we will...we are mortal.
2
"A hushed panic"? More like a media-created panic, after all it it is in the front page of the NYT. How convenient for big farma, isn't it? Soon governments will be forking out trillions while millions of panicked people (Americans, mostly) demand an urgent solution to a problem that may be more of a nuisance compared to other diseases. Whatever happened to that other world-killer, AIDS?
1
What happened to AIDS was ... science. Thanks in no small part to the “farma” companies you deride, HIV infection is now controlled with well-tolerated medications. Waiting for an infectious disease outbreak to reach epidemic proportions is not a wise strategy, so dealing with today’s “nuisance” may save thousands of lives down the road.
3
It is the same kind of news as Global Worming. Every year we have news like this: Ebola, Microcephaly Zika and etc ..
I think it is time to rethink NYTimes news policies and change chief editor, otherwise you start to remind CNN and The SUN.
If that bacteria was really a problem you would see already people dying in your office and next door on the street. The real infection would spread faster than internet news ...
@Sergey Hazarov It may be a typo, but I particularly like your phrase Global Worming. A new superbug, or super worm? Kudos.
1
I like “global worming” lol
I hope doctors have stopped prescribing antibiotics on request.
2
This is a crisis. Meanwhile Trump appoints grifters to the EPA who demolish regulations and research. Let’s spend more on the CDC instead of an unnecessary wall. Microbes don’t honor borders.
1221
@Ellen You are absolutely correct with your comment.
37
@Ellen
How did this become political?
18
@Peter everything is political. Politics is the tool we use for collective action against major problems - the rise resistant germs is such a problem. Granted, Ellen moaning about it on a NYtimes thread isn't going to solve anything. but its a big step up from your frame of mind. anyone who says or event thinks "how did this become political" regarding major issues is part the big ugly weight of inaction that paralyzes us.
100
This is reminiscent of the ebola outbreak back in 2014. At the time everyone was afraid it might go ripping through the world. But President Obama did a brilliant job of coordinating with the CDC in the US and with politicians and medical experts in countries in Africa to help stem the tide. But today, with international trust at a low point and cuts to international aid and the CDC, I’ve no idea who we can look to for leadership. Can President Trump step up as Obama did?
15
@Neil
"Can President Trump step up as Obama did?"
No.
4
@Neil
I am so in the way of all this, and you know, I like it like that..
1
I understand, yes, there is a climate of secrecy surrounding the science of contamination. Part of the problem is we are working against increasing neglect of basic hygiene practices due to our increasing reliance on hand sanitizer for cleanliness.
Prominent pathogens such as an antibacterial agent extracted from zinnias, are not doing the jobs they were once capable of because their finger-like protrusions are being cut off by stronger antibiotic-resistant strains.
I am only an amateur scientist so I spend most of my time studying microflora, and I have no spare time to read the research surrounding this issue. I only know that I am using hot water and soap for most of my washing up before surgery.
2
@Ina Fried Good point about hand sanitizers. I also find that there is no hot water or proper soap in the restrooms of many public places.
Frightening millions of people is the justification for not disclosing outbreaks is absolutely criminal. In America, we have the right to choose our healthcare. It is up to us whether we stay at a hospital or not infected with these types of germs. It should be mandatory to disclose outbreaks and leave it up to us to weigh the risks. Only after scientists have data on outbreaks can they find the solutions to them. They need to know the conditions ripe for these outbreaks, the patients involved, etc., it is insane to restrict public health data. When will the government stop treating us like children? When we act like adults and demand our rights in healthcare by changing laws and insist that all medical facilities including doctor's offices to disclose outbreaks.
4
Maybe you want or believe we have certain rights in America. I think you’re stuck with what we have are certain perceptions of call them American rights.
1
Interesting essay. When we hear of the secrecy here it is no wonder we have anti Vaxers. Government colluding with the health care establishment to keep information from citizen patients they have every right to know. Seems to me that big Agra and big Pharma benefit here. Everyone is in hysterics over pain meds so that we have now reached the point where those in real pain can’t get a prescription but antibiotics are handed out like candy, invading our food supply, in combination with our crops being sprayed with anti fungals. Suspicion is healthy and warranted
18
@Patrick
"When we hear of the secrecy here it is no wonder we have anti Vaxers."
difference being there is no documented secrecy backed with facts and credible data regarding harm done by vaccines...but thanks for playing along at home.
1
Your chart says that there were 587 Candida auris infections identified in the United States since 2013. We have over 300 million people in our country. So, since we really can't do anything to protect ourselves from this incurable deadly infection should we be scaring 300 million people?
10
We couldn't do anything about Aids either. It's 500 now, 1 million in the future.
2
@NYChap...Systemic fungal infections are normally only a threat to people who are otherwise sick or immune compromised, which is why the concern is concentrated on hospital contamination.
2
@DP As I recall with Aids one generally had to engage in certain activities to contract it. It was not "everywhere" as Candida auris infections apparently are when an infected person is present. The Aids activities spreading to be avoided were largely related to unprotected sex, drug use with shared needles and contaminated blood transfusions early on before blood was tested. In order to avoid contracting Aids one would just take some simple safety precautions. That is not the case with Candida auris infections.
For lo, our birth planet biome become so disturbed by the ways of humans that it believed mass extinction was about to occur of such catastrophic magnitude that it would be total and leave a mostly sterile world. It foresaw the septillions of microbes of the planetary biome would die along with all the more complex but finite creatures. It set out to eliminate the threat.
Yea verily, the planet biome created diseases and toxins that fought the Destructors. Even with their advanced medical sciences fighting at every bulwark, they lost. The plants that fed them fell deeply ill and diminished, and the Disruptors began to starve.
It came to pass, there was no negotiation possible. The planet biome was remorseless. Poets of the Destructors sang the irony of the end of us who had brought the end to so many others.
GUT 4.0
6
When are our governments going to limit the use of pesticides?
When are we going to stop big Farma from using antibiotics to grow bigger chickens and fungicides to harvest pretty potatoes ?
Seems to me before the government puts controls and limits and states of emergencies on opioids - they should clamp down on antibiotics.
But as long as we’ve got a bunch of Republicans sitting back smiling as Trump cronies kill all environmental regulation - it won’t happen. Maybe if Mitch McConnell contracts Candida Auris it’ll change his tune. Or at least do him in, so someone with some concern about the environment can lead the Senate.
I know I’m mixing issues here, but to me, the outbreak of antibiotic resistance diseases is a distinctly republican issue as they are the party of de regulation.
8
Nature Abhors a vacuum, unfortunately humanity thinks it can outrun nature and that is probably going to lead to our ultimate demise. I know everyone loves the idea of beating up on our Pharmaceutical industry, but this is why investing in R&D is so important.
3
@Ron
Will drug companies and research institutes and hospitals share information, with government support, and work together?
@Ron - yes research is important, but we would do well to remember than the pharmaceutical industry spends more on advertising and lobbying than on research.
1
We live in this illusion that our country is the greatest country in the world, but if you open your eyes and mind, while most people don’t ever do, and look at our country with a clear head instead of holding on to your steadfast beliefs, you would see the the United States is one of the worst countries on this planet. Our government is so vastly corrupt and money has meant more than human lives for over a century.
We allow presidents to weaken or eliminate regulations that are designed to protect us in the name of the almighty dollar. We allow corporations to pollute the air, water, and soil by eliminating regulations because they cut into profits. So many Americans are conned into believing that climate change is not real. And now you get to see how our country allows hospitals and farms to keep you in the dark over diseases that are rampantly circling the globe.
I would say it’s hard to believe that we don’t allow our meats to be tracked like most of the world does, but I would be kidding myself. Don’t you think we have allowed our chosen leaders to be bought off by corporations and it is time to do something about it? Or do we just sit here and do nothing while the politicians and corporate leaders get richer and richer regardless of how many of us die in the process? This isn’t their fault, it’s ours for allowing it to happen. I don’t care how good the economy is, Trump and people like him to be ousted and locked away. Take back our country before it’s too late.
20
"Health officials say that disclosing outbreaks frightens patients about a situation they can do nothing about, particularly when the risks are unclear."
What? We certainly can do something when we find out (as we should) that our hospital of choice has an outbreak: We can choose to go to a different hospital!!!!.
But, of course, that is what they are worried about.
This is truly outrageous.
12
Risks seem pretty clear when it’s a seemingly ineradicable fungus that kills in about ninety days.
1
They could hire and train better housekeeping staff and keep the hospital cleaner but wait, that would cut into the huge profits of the allegedly not-for-profit hospitals and we couldn't have that. We could demand more registered nurses who, because of their education, are more likely to minimize the spread of infection by washing their hands. Or we could do what most nursing homes do and hire minimally trained "aids" who are unaware of the need to wash hands and cross contaminate residents. It seems that shareholders looking for a profit feel that a few patients dying is a fair price for their gain.
It also seems that the over 40 percent of Americians who elected and support the administration that apposes oversight (regulation, a bad word in their lexicon) of these profit mongers think everything is as it should be. (It is not just Trump, and not just McConnell)
Will the Law of Karma have them die from infection first as retaliation for their greed?
1
There are too many people. And nature will have to take care of that.
14
@derekbax, you are so right. This is the overarching problem in the world that nobody seems to be talking about.
3
@derekbax There aren't too many people. There is so much unpopulated space on the planet. We just like to cram together.
Two million Americans contract resistant infections annually, and 23,000 die from them. Just over 13000 Americans are victims of gun homicides.
Let's put as much effort into this health hazard as we do with other causes of death in the US and it would be eradicated in no time.
6
We forget that Mother Earth has her ways of culling invasive species who expand past their habitat's ability to maintain them. We are that species. And technology apparently cannot contain the greed and the ignorance that is blooming like a rash across our social habitat.
12
For 75 years ,since the introduction of effective antibiotics, physicians have noted the development of antibiotic resistant strains of human pathogens. The cause has proven to be use and abuse of broad spectrum antibiotics. Antibiotics select naturally resistant strains of bacteria as they destroys the rest. Antibiotic resistance is Darwinian natural selection at work.
The conclusion is inescapable. To reduce the development of resistant pathogens, physicians, agronomists and veterinarians , and must accept strict “Best Practice” guidelines for use of antibiotics based on modern science. Increased crop yields goes hand in hand with creation of super pathogens. The knee-jerk use of antibiotics based on a “just-in-case” motivation by physicians and pateints must stop.
Antibiotics came into general use in 1950. Resistance to those antibiotics was quickly recognized. Physician and patient education helps but in the end only state,Federal, and international regulation based on best science can reduce microbial resistance. Public reporting hospital rates of antibiotic resistance can help reduce inappropriate use of antibiotics.
Without such regulation, once curable infections in healthy patients will become as fatal as they were before antibiotics were created.
7
In addition to this problem with chemicals used in agriculture, we're also killing beneficial insects and pollinators, and we're bringing cancer to humans with other chemicals. All for more profitable production of food.
The lobbies are powerful. I don't have much hope for policy change worldwide. And this can spread worldwide, fast. Buckle your seat belts everyone, we're in for a ride.
7
All of the cans kicked down the roads for short term profit are now hitting the wall of Mother Nature. At the same time. Drug-resistant bacteria and mold. Knew about it 50 years ago. We did nothing. Global warming. Habitat and species loss. Destruction of the oceans. Melting glaciers and permafrost. Ditto, ditto, ditto......
If mankind survives the 21st century this generation will go down as the one that could have taken action. But didn’t. And when those future people ask “why?” The answer will be: “money”.
8
Where are our elected governmental leaders? Our world is facing these life & death issues which will kill millions of us & family members. This is a crisis of epic proportions which our elected leaders need to confront now.
panic is a genetic survival skill hardwired in human DNA.
the CDC's unwarranted concern for creating panic is subverting human survival in the face of a reality to which panic is a rational response needed to provoke the change required.
"panic"—from Greek panikos, from the name of the god Pan, noted for causing terror, to whom woodland noises were attributed...humans have created panic in the woodlands and the woodlands are fighting back.
4
The idea of protecting the public from needless worry is a lie. It is a convenience for the "market driven" individuals in the medical profession and the Pharmaceutical industry. It certainly helped the spread of AIDS.
9
Did any of the infected facilities try using bleach?
2
A science challenged administration and Congress is worrisome.
Is there a full time head for the CDC yet?
4
I know of ways to reduce fungicides on crops. But the anti-GMO folks won't let us.
4
Dr. Rhodes said: “We are driving this with the use of antifungicides on crops.” I thought people who were proponents of organic agriculture were against fungicides. Who knew the the chemicals were against themselves.
The NYT should have caught this and asked the doctor for a revision of her quote.
1
Great article, but a couple of obvious questions that the article does not address:
In the global map occurrence for C. Auris- is there a bias toward counties with medical infrastructure capable of identifying the infection (hard to believe that an easily transmitted infection somehow stops at the Colombia/Brazil border) or is there some other reason for that?
In C. Auris by State: confirmed and probable cases seem to occur around major port of entry into USA. Is there a correlation, detection bias, or just chance?
273
@zhen, not a coincidence. introductions to US came from travelers, usually to asia or south america. (that can be shown from the genetic analysis.)
re detection bias, certainly. the history outlined in the article shows that when countries have done retrospective studies on banked samples, they find things from before the first ID in Japan in 2009. which hospitals are doing so is a function of resources, not prevalence.
24
CT not a major port of entry. it did state it is being found in manure we use globally. SouthAmerica has huge beef farms that feed cows grains grown in this antifungal manure. They r biggest exporters of beef...to Asua& USA. Japan is niggest Kobe beef farms and exporters. It is spread simply by humans eating vegetables and animals.
12
@zhen
It's also possible that countries with lower population density (smaller cities) and a lower volume of international travel are seeing a lower incidence of C. auris. More people, living more closely together, and coming into more frequent contact with people from around the globe -- all factors that favor disease transmission.
That might explain why most of Africa is shown as non-affected, but wouldn't explain the difference between Colombia and Brazil shown on the map.
10
There is one piece of technology that should be able to deal with this and pretty much any other surface bacteria and fungi. It is a short wavelength ultra violet source. It is at 122 nm. A sweet spot for killing bad things.
The huge difference between 122 nm and the broad range of the UV spectrum already in use is that this UV is harmless to humans. You can point at your eyes without damage. It can be used in rooms (e.g., hospitals, surgeries, etc.) homes, public spaces, food processing ad infinitum.
It has received a significant amount work to productize it. It is not clear from my reading what reason the equipment is taking so long to be placed into production. A hand held device for a similar or same wavelength has been made in Asia for some years. It will not kill fungal infections that the light can not get to. But it can clear open surgeries, the patient rooms, and air systems, schools. Really just everywhere. And it might be useful if you could pass a person's blood through a device to kill passing fungi or bacteria. Maybe clearing a blood infection.
I would really really like to have a device for home and personal use.
Perhaps the NYT could look into this for an article..
6
I am a microbiologist. I say this only to establish some degree of credentials.
Dr. Chiller focuses on one of the most important issues in infectious disease, The emergence of "hidden species". It is not unusual to have organisms that are present in relatively small numbers emerge as major pathogens after dominant species are minimized or even eliminated in an ecosystem. The human microbiome, like other ecosystems, has dominant species that may keep others below the levels necessary to cause an evident infection.
By eliminating or reducing the dominant species the secondary species may emerge in numbers adequate to cause clinically evident problems, i.e. the secondary pathogens now become dominant. Whether this occurs in vivo or the environment, the principle is the same.
One needs to look at all implications in dealing with infectious disease.
677
@GSS
Indeed, and those secondary species takeover fast, like weeds, too fast for the adaptive capacity of the status quo. The ecosystem resets in unexpected ways, there is a new order.
46
@GSS Thank you. A fascinating and important angle on all this.
38
@GSS
I think this is more about host factors. We are keeping more and more debilitated people alive. There will always be pathogens of low virulence attacking the immunosuppressed. But this line of thinking seems to blame the victims and doesn't appeal to editors looking for eyeballs or conspiracy theorists looking to blame big medicine, pharma, agriculture, etc.
12
This is ultimately related to the unsustainable food systems that we have created, and particularly the use of antibiotics in agriculture.
There are an enormous number of new and sustainable techniques for creating fertile soils and nutrient dense foods that will hopefully replace our industrial food system as it exists today. Soil remineralization with finely ground rock dust and biochar, no till techniques and many other techniques will eventually create a revolution and contribute to stabilizing the climate. Fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides have created a disastrous system affecting the health of the planet on every level, including the loss of soil carbon.
Remineralize the Earth
The same can be applied to conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry.
When I was a child, I was given penicillin so often that I became immune to it and since rely on herbs, many of which have antibiotic properties and I have not taken antibiotics in 40 years. There are alternatives like colloidal and nano particle silver. My daughter grew up without antibiotics and didn't need a dose until the age of 30 required by a dental treatment. What seems alternative now will make its way into the mainstream. And in conjunction with great breakthroughs in science.
13
"Other prominent strains of the fungus Candida — one of the most common causes of bloodstream infections in hospitals — have not developed significant resistance to drugs, but more than 90 percent of C. auris infections are resistant to at least one drug, and 30 percent are resistant to two or more drugs, the C.D.C. said."
This should say other Candida species, not strains.
2
Cross-referencing with other articles in the NYT, David Brooks' column about Canada handling issues of public welfare differently than we do gives some hope. If we could aim for a more collaborative, less profit-driven, less individual entity driven approach, there would not be so much fear about sharing information. We are all in it together.
7
What a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into using anti fungus chemicals and antibiotics in agriculture.
Layer on top of that is a secrecy mindset with hospitals and governmental agencies in publishing this info. Hiding it doesn’t help. Sharing helps build strategies to fix the infection.
Later on top of everything is the over prescribing antibiotics, particularly in primary care settings.
7
@Dave
We’re in a mess legislatively. And via the undoing of regulations.
This is a nightmare scenario.
3
My brother passed away a year ago last October from a fungal infection traced to his picc line. He had cancer and was immune compromised. The hospital said it was a candida infection. By the time he was in the hospital, the cancer had returned and had spread to his spine, liver, and lungs. The fungal infection on his heart was just more than his poor body could fight.
8
Interesting this article doesn’t touch on misdiagnoses that result in inappropriate treatment and contribute to bacterial or fungal resistance. I’m not familiar with descriptive figures related to misdiagnoses, but I suspect the rate at which misdiagnoses occur is rather high. As a woman, I know of too many experiences, for example, of other women whose doctors, upon confirming the existence of a yeast infection, have prescribed them anti-fungals to treat what ultimately turns out to be the wrong fungal strain. In many cases, women repeatedly take the anti-fungal prescribed to them and only after months of stagnant or, worse, increased symptoms do they seek second and third opinions, at which point they learn the strain affecting them is resistant to the medication prescribed to them. I’d be curious to know how often this occurs on a larger scale or broader context, to men and women.
10
While I agree that misdiagnosis seems often to be a major factor contributing to epidemic outbreaks and it may well prove to be one in this case, the major underlying cause that remains to be adequately addressed is the overuse of agricultural chemicals. They are at the heart of so many health and environmental problems: drug resistant infections, poisoned water, pollinating insect declines, etc. Congress and global regulatory agencies need to seriously control Monsanto and the rest of the chemical industry.
4
When I look at the number of posts here extolling the virtues of this or that quackery, I reflect that there is a very, very big industry out there hawking nostrums, unguents, therapies, additives, megavitamins, chelations, cleanses, purges, probiotics, and whatever.
And that there’s even less scientific backing for any of it than there is government regulation.
And that there’s more than one born every minute.
And that the fantasy of sloshing on the “alternative medicines,” and living forever is very little different from the fantasy of sloshing on the antibiotics and antifungals and insecticides and pesticides and living forever.
14
@Robert -- Except that the snake oil is generally harmless pap, and the Crony-packed FDA, EPA, CDC and USDA have given a pass to many harmful drugs and pesticides that never should have been permitted for use.
I'll take the smear of a unguent any day over one from an agency under control of large corporate interests who use science to accumulate wealth first and health second.
3
@Robert
One man's meat, another man's poison. If what you call "quackery" is what heals someone, then it's medicine.
2
Except first of all, very little of this stuff has been clinically investigated in any kind of rigorous way...and the stuff that HAS, is often actively dangerous.
That Dr. Axe? He also offers the debunked and dangerous chelation “therapy,” for autism. Have a doible shot of Luperal, on me.
The chiro for diabetics? Worthless, and actively dangerous because it discourages them from actual treatment.
St John’s Wort? Oh, it elevates your mood all right. Should do, given the big honking ephedrine dose.
And how come y’ll rant about Big Pharma and modern medicine selling uselessnesses, while okaying probiotics that generally do zip? Why’s that okay?
Why’s it okay to rant about BP making Big Bank, and yet somehow, the climbing billions getting thrown into “naturopathic,” and other quack medicines, hey, that’s jist fine. Also fine: believing that the same quacks who’re making bank off selling you this junk are telling you the truth about its safety and efficacy?
You think they became God’s Holy Anointed? Wakefield much?
And last. No, no, no, a thousand times no, your belief that this or that cured you doesn’t mean jack. It means that you believe, which is often helpful when a) there was nothing wrong with you in the first place, and b) you’re looking to have your mood elevated anyway.
Oh, almost forgot. Lemme say it again: the fantasies that have people shovelling antibioticsare little different from those driving your quackeries.
Scariest line:
"The genome sequencing showed that there were four distinctive versions of the fungus, with differences so profound that they suggested that these strains had diverged thousands of years ago and emerged as resistant pathogens from harmless environmental strains in four different places at the same time."
We have met the enemy, and it is us. Why are pesticides used until they are deemed unsafe? Shouldn't the default be that they are banned until proven safe?
38
@Jay Becks
"Why are pesticides used until they are deemed unsafe?"
Because pesticides are profitable and the harm is not specifically traceable (so no liability) back the pesticide.
Plus the fact that the EPA is one of the many industry "captured" regulatory agencies.
Pharmaceuticals are exactly the same way. Big Pharma throws it on the market as fast as possible and has a budget line-item set aside for law suits - they do their final testing on you. That's why many MDs do not prescribe drugs newer than five years; they wait to see if it gets pulled.
The FDA is another industry captured agency. I guess they all are because of the very high ROI of getting one in your pocket.
America is now all about corporations and never ever about the People.
6
Correct me if I am wrong but the slide shown for bacteria and the slide shown for C. auris are the same. I was already concerned that an article about the danger of a fungus would start with a video about bacteria. There is enough confusion already among the American public about the source of infections, which in turn is leading to the overuse of antibiotics. Antibiotics, for instance, won't do anything for viral infections. Now patients may believe that, by reducing their antibiotic use, they are reducing their risk of contracting C. auris. It's best to keep these bugs and issues separate for the sake of clarity, and for the sake of our health.
20
@Moso
Thanks - I am a scientist working with yeast, including Candida. This article is not well-written. I totally agree.
3
@LNK
So, what should be corrected?
@Geranima
Almost all of it. It is sophomoric.
The story of Candida auris is familiar. I contracted clostridiodes difficile also known as C diff, in a hospital after being treated with various antibiotics to deal with gastroenteritis. Ironically, after being treated with other antibiotics which failed to help, it was finally another antibiotic which solved the problem. In my experience, antibiotics can be deadly and lifesaving. But attention must also be paid to all illnesses which are so infectious as to create the utter isolation felt by patients who are infected. I understood why caregivers were afraid to attend to me, but the resulting isolation only added to a horrible hospital experience.
6
@Judith
This is fungus! Antibiotics treat bacteria, not a fungus.
2
@Judith Did you die during your “horrible hospital experience” with a serious infectious disease? Sometimes being in the hospital is indeed horrible. I have to roll my eyes at people who think they can order up a better patient experience like they are being served in a restaurant.
1
Making money off of medical care is in direct conflict with "medical care." As concepts the two cannot exist side by side. Agriculture is part of this - allowing big farms to use antibiotics and care for animals in completely inhumane ways is profit driven. The almighty God of being wealthy will not be driven out by mere consumer needs. It would take a voter revolution - difficult when gerrymandering is a national pastime except in CA - to address this adequately. Especially in the current era of "science is not important" being pushed by the current Administration. Scary.
20
I read a book not too long ago - published in 1984 - Modern Meat. It was enough to get me to rethink eating meat or only rarely. Antibiotics were heavily fed to animals so they would not get sick and also grow faster (profits). I’m sure some of those antibiotics were consumed secondarily by humans to who knows what effect. As a consistent rule I do not to take any medication (including over the counter) even for a cold or flu. The human body produces its own antibodies so I prefer to rely on those. Viruses and bacteria will always be around, but as the world becomes more accessible through ease and proliferation of travel, the challenges will only rise to keep these microscopic threats from advancing. Definitely scary to consider that the biggest risks are within hospitals and nursing homes.
9
@Out There....Some antibiotics used in meat production are of antibiotic classes not used in human medicine (monensin and rumensin for example). Further, the amount of antibiotic that is fed to the animals is already at sub therapeutic levels. The amount of antibiotic, if any, that might remain in the meat is therefore far below the level of any meaningful biological activity. This is not an endorsement of the use of human antibiotics in animal feed. It is a practice that should be stopped. My comment is only to assure you that the amount of antibiotics, if any, in the meat you eat, is far below anything that could have adverse consequences.
5
It is apparent that we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet, and our efforts to feed an ever-growing population through unsustainable agricultural practices have had dire unintended consequences.
As global economies evolve from an agrarian to an industrial and post-industrial basis, people have smaller families. Unfortunately this evolution is much too gradual. International leadership in family planning might help, but is not going to come from the U.S. Other word superpowers are too inwardly focused on economic growth to fill the gap. Perhaps increasing global press coverage of our Malthusian dilemma might someday raise a groundswell of public opinion, eventually leading to concerted political action. Unfortunately, systemic root-cause problem analysis doesn't sell newspapers. Nor does it, these days, win elections.
16
@Robert M
The root problem is capitalism, which has become toxic like a cancer. It used to work, but now its internal contradictions have taken over. It is a global juggernaut detached from and uncaring of human considerations.
4
@Robert M
It's so clear, and yet there are so many who just don't want to believe/accept it. Overpopulation is the root of most of our existential dangers. Paul Ehrlich was correct; just a little off on his timing. I'm happy I was born in the 1950s--really hit the sweet spot. I feel sorry for those being born today...
1
@Robert M Agree. Religion is also a root cause. Religions want babies to easily indoctrinate more followers.
2
This underscores how a market-driven pharmaceutical industry is a failure when it comes to fulfilling the public’s health actual needs. Pharmaceutical companies will not on their own pursue new antibiotics, antivirals, or antifungals because the profit potential is too low for the investment, not to mention that the outcome is risky and far from guaranteed.
A different model would have the pharmaceutical companies competing for big-ticket rewards provided by the government if they hit milestones for drugs deemed important by government agencies (like CDC, NIH) and hand it over to them, making that the source of their profit, eliminating the current need to market the drugs. This is how we do the moonshots we need.
9
@Nate Hilts...."Pharmaceutical companies will not on their own pursue new antibiotics, antivirals, or antifungals because the profit".....Neither would you invest your hard earned savings in any venture that was guaranteed in advance to lose your money.
@W.A. Spitzer Like almost everything else that pharmaceutical companies claim these days, this makes no sense. How would developing a new class of antibiotics that worked where other antibiotics fail possibly be a money-losing venture?
1
@Alex....Because any new antibiotic that works against resistant bacteria, or any new anit-fungal that works against resistant fungi, would immediately be assigned to reserve status only to be used in emergency cases. The medical community would be correct in requiring reserve status, but this would guarantee that the development costs of the antibiotic or anti-fungal would never be recovered.
1
It is rather interesting that hospital infections began to rise when hospitals outsourced their housekeeping and laundry. I certainly noticed this at the hospitals where I worked.
11
@heysus
Really? Hospitals had a brief period of a few decades mid-twentieth century where it wasn't assumed that one's chances of dying were higher being admitted than not being admitted. For the majority of human history, people avoided hospitals "like the plague." Today, physicians fear hospitalizing patients because of what they'll contract there more than any other issue with their medical care. And for good reason -- C. diff is all too frequently a death sentence.
2
I guess we can stop worrying about global warming since we'll all have rotted away in a few year anyway and that'll stop the carbon emissions. Seriously, alcohol, in high enough concentrations, generally keeps yeast under control so I think it will be prudent for me to increase my consumption of wine and beer as a prophylactic. Cheers.
20
This is a surprise? We have been fighting natural selection and saving individuals that should have died. Nature is just doing its job. The weaker the gene pool gets the worse the end result will be. Mending a broken bone and alleviating pain is one thing. Letting the body build its own immunity like breast feeding and not using hand sanitizers on a hourly basis is another. The rise of diseases like measles in those who have received immunization is becoming more common. Sure measles might kill a child, but then again so can the common cold. Maybe it is time to re-examine what medicine is doing long term and reconsider. Time to also recognize that when you were conceived you are doomed to die. It is only a matter of time, location and cause. Constant worry is only going to speed up the process. Enjoy each day you have instead.
8
When it comes to deadly novel pathogens, ignoring the problem will lead to mass casualties. “Constant worry” will not lead to fatalities.
1
We are actually the fungus. We need to find a cure for us. Not the other way around.
6
@André This article IS about the cure for Us. We are a K type population growth species (like deer, fluctuating on the carrying capacity of our environment) acting like an R type population growth species (like mosquitoes: exponential population growth until a deleterious event like a freeze) knocks the population down to minuscule levels, to start the cycle all over again). We need something to take us down.
2
@JN Dauterive
And not too long ago (74,000 years) we were down to 1,000 breeding pairs. Barely made it back from that near extinction. So if we get hit with climate change and bugs and a nuclear war we will be back, just not all of us. Then we can do it all again.
These fungi and bacteria are evolving, and I have not seen any commenters mentions the fact that the teaching of evolution continues to be challenged by conservative Christians in our public schools. Imagine trying to face this threat of evolving resistance to fungicides and antibiotics with scientists who had not been trained in evolutionary theory? That would make it insolvable.
9
@PWV, it is not just conservative Christians. As recently reported, it is also adherents of ultra orthodox Judaism, for example, in New York City and Rockland County, NY, who have been refusing to vaccinate children and even refusing to cooperate with public health authorities, causing large outbreaks of measles. There is a role for religion but probably best in moderation. . .
1
It's a race!
Will fossil fuel corporations eradicate humanity and destroy the planet through climate change?
Or will the factory farming corporations do it through abuse of antibiotics and pesticides?
Ooh, so exciting!
16
@NFC
and it will take a full force panic to push fossil fuel corporations and factory farming corporations out of the policy control loop—which explains why the CDC is more concerned with creating panic than in addressing the problem at its source.
@NFC
Or Pharmaceutical Companies charge so much for the anti-fungal that people will die cuz they can’t afford treatment?
2
@NFC
You just couldn’t help yourself could you? Fossil fuels, evil oil companies global whining.
Broken record.
I don't know why this article doesn't discuss present research and therapy development.
1
“Health officials say that disclosing outbreaks frightens patients about a situation they can do nothing about, particularly when the risks are unclear.”
Telling them woyld wRn patients and give them the option of seeking treatment elsewhere. It’s called informed consent.
6
Folks, this is a terrific piece... by two most able reporters... in my paper....
The New York Times, our best, more coming... Bard College, Hannah Arendt Center, a Symposium, September 19-20
Let’s hope we survive what we’ve done to ourselves...
When the insects start dying, there is one question: are we next?
4
It’s no accident or coincidence that a very smart person like Bill Gates has been sounding the alarm for years that we’re primed for a global pandemic.
It’s going to happen; it’s just a matter of when.
When it does, the primitive behavior of humans in the aftermath of events like major storms (e.g., Katrina) will seem saintly in comparison. Get ready for Game Of Thrones-like chaos...Winter is coming.
6
@NorCal Patriot primitive behavior, eh?
I took in 10 people and 9 dogs.
Just like SARS, MERS, Ebola, and other serious yet extremely rare diseases that have been sensationalized by the media, this too will be a talking point for a few days or weeks and then quickly be forgotten by anyone unaffected by it.
What I hope isn't forgotten, however, is the value of research, scholarship, and research/development. We haven't had a truly new class of antibiotics since 1987. Itraconazole, the antifungal noted in the article, was patented in the 1980's, as well. Pharmaceutical companies are regularly coming out with new chemotherapy and immune-modulator drugs which cost thousands of dollars per dose, but no one seems to focus on developing new antimicrobials, largely because the monetary return-on-investment is not high enough.
But, what about the moral and ethical "return-on-investment?"
In the medical specialities
4
We need a new profit model that encourages development of new drugs to fight these infections. Elsewhere in the comments I write about the reward-based model.
About 10 years ago, infectious diseases were thought to be a thing of the past, like small pox, polio, even tuberculosis. Anti-biotics, such as penicillin and streptomycin were effective treatments. Instead, we were told to worry about chronic illnesses, like cancer, heart disease, and sinusitis.
Conditions that shape the prevalence of disease have changed. Exercise, weight control, and statins have lowered the incidence of heart disease. New chemicals are slowing the progression of cancer.
On the other hand, travel is increasing the transmission and incidence of infectious disease. So is the weakening of penicillin (a fungus ironically) owing to mutations in bacteria, viruses, and fungi.
As the distinguished microbiologist, Rene Dubos, wrote in Mirage of Health, we will never be free of these organisms. They are essential to evolution.
10
We have been warned for decades about the widespread misuse of antibiotics leading to antimicrobial resistance.
While many physician have cut back dramatically in the prescription of antibiotics for humans, the estimate of antibiotic use in global agriculture is more than 50,000 tons annually. Many of these antibiotics, have similar chemical structures to those antibiotics used for human therapeutics. They are applied in animal husbandry, aquaculture and crop production.
Industrial profitability seems to far outweigh concerns about a mysterious a highly resistant infection that can span the globe at an alarming rate. Will it take a massive human die-off to bring reason to the drug and agricultural industries that care nothing about the resistance issue plaguing mankind.
19
@Jefflz - It might be useful to note that the use of azoles as agricultural anti-fungals predates their internal use in human medicine.
1
@W.A. Spitzer
Good point - It should be argued that once approved for human use, anti-fungal agents like those in the azole class should be banned from agricultural use. It is a question of priorities. Hopefully the value of human life prevails in that choice.
4
But we have lots of botanicals with activity against many, most, perhaps all Candida strains. Is anyone talking about this? True, in immunocompromised host they may be less effective. Let's see if we can find any published research or speak to practitioners who have used them thusly.
8
@MRB
If it’s been known about in Spain for a few years now, with a brother-in-law who likely died of this one year ago, whose own son is a Pulmonologist, in a country where there are many pharmacists of the old school, still using mountain herbs and so on, I’m betting they’re on this in Spain already!
Probably in other countries as well. If it’s in the EU, which avoids many agricultural products the US uses freely, it seems to me that fungicides are not the only source now.
Now it seems, the genie is out of the bottle and containing this has got to be the most urgent thing.
Otherwise, are babies born at home now safer than babies born in a hospital?
Should people avoid surgery or hospital stays or visits at all cost, unless absolutely necessary?
Should people, if possible, avoid emergency rooms? Which ones?
7
“Botanicals.”
Please name one, and explain why you think it works.
1
@Robert
Coconut Oil: Contains caprylic acid, which kills yeast cells.
Olive Oil: The antioxidants in olive oil help you get rid of Candida.
Garlic: Contains allicin, a sulphur-containing compound with specific-to-Candida anti-fungal properties.
Cinnamon: Has anti-fungal and anti-inflammatory benefits.
Apple Cider Vinegar: Its enzymes may help break down Candida.
Lemons: Has some anti-fungal properties; and helps your liver detox.
Ginger: Has anti-inflammatory and anti-fungal properties, plus it supports your liver.
Cloves: Very effective (internal) anti-fungal. Clove oil can also be used as a topical aid for infections.
CRUCIFEROUS VEGGIES: Broccoli, radishes, brussels sprout, cabbage, etc. have sulphur- and nitrogen-containing compounds that attack Candida.
Wild salmon: Omega-3 fatty acids fight fungal infections.
Berberine: Has been shown in research to combat candida albicans by disrupting the cellular membrane.
Grapefruit Seed extract: kills over 800 bacterial and viral strains, 100 strains of fungus, and many types of parasites.
Don't disrespect the plants, they are biochemical factories that have been evolving for about 450,000,000 years. We've only been here for about 2,000,000. Plants rule this planet, not us.
1
This reminds me of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s. How it started slowly and then exploded into the populations of cities like New York and San Francisco taking thousands of good, mostly young people who could and would have made great contributions to civilization. Now this in the US, Canada and other lands. In addition to Ebola. For those of us who’ve been around for awhile, this is breathtaking. Thank you for publishing this article.
16
Because it is so lethal, because there is no cure, because it is so easily spread, because the hospitals where it’s lodged are unknown, because the CDC also has its hands tied, because legislatures have so far done nothing, because fungicides remain so easily purchased, because farmers are using them so freely ... have I gotten all the problems here?
Because of all of the above we need an immediate and many pronged campaign to address ALL the problems. Something like the AIDES battle.
We need research funded. We need the CDC to be able to act, both to contain outbreaks and to publicize hospitals and other institutions where the public should be aware that vulnerable individuals could be infected.
We need legislation to make sure the CDC has all the tools its needs to quarantine this fungus - to the degree that’s possible.
We need a campaign to inform the public. To inform those most vulnerable what to avoid or where to avoid going. What symptoms to pay attention to.
We need doctors offices to be prepared for patients coming in with symptoms which may look like the flu, but be a fungus.
We need quick and easy ways to diagnose the fungus in its various forms.
Public Health in every state and loyalty must be ready to do what it can in view of this epidemic.
I now understand I probably lost a brother-in-law in Spain to this fungus. Vulnerable due to a lung condition already, he was immediately admitted to intensive care, dying 10 days later of massive lung fungus!
20
@TheraP
we need a good old fashioned panic to overcome the many points of inertia you rightfully detail...panic is sometimes required.
2
@TheraP Well. We also need an administration willing to act much faster than Reagan's administration did to HIV. Do we think that will really happen right now? Building a wall won't keep this out.
@teoc2
I suggest we get them panicked over at Fox and Friends!
You are right that panic is sometimes the only thing to overcome inertia.
2
"How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." Wendell Berry
What can we do? Become aware of the impacts of food choices. Choose organic when it's best, know your farmer when you can. Learn more. Eating is an agricultural act. Ultimately, it connects us to the economics and politics of the planet.
23
@ChrisB
This could well be one of the fungi that inhabit SOIL everywhere!
If so, it’s not just food, you could get this gardening. Or hiking.
This thing scares me to death!
1
@TheraP I concur with Chris B's main point that one's actions can affect or at least not support the large scale agribusiness practices promoting the resistant C. auris strains.
As a gardener myself, I hope/assume that nurturing my local soil organically, so that it has a healthy diverse microbiome, will keep its few C. auris residents in their old-fashioned non-resistant forms. As noted in the article, they likely were that way for millions of years before the drug-resistant strains appeared; the implication is that in a relatively natural system it was more important for them to evolve defenses against other soil microorganisms and only when fungicides became the dominant threat did C. auris strains take advantage of their genetic potential to become resistant.
My brother and sister-in-law have 3 small children and are big advocates of medication first (for example, cough medicine even for the 5 year old and even after most stores took it off the shelf). They recently dropped their pediatrician because they felt he wasn't willing to give them enough antibiotics for colds, illness.
It's a very uphill battle for docs.
23
@Southern Hope
I know people like this. They are the worst.
Health officials have the responsibility to inform us about these matters, and not make selfish decisions to hide reality.
Am tired of all the self-servitude that is the hallmark of our time.
9
I recall, as a student, when Penicillin and Streptomycin were being replaced by a new broad spectrum antibiotic, Ampicillin. Around that time I recall reading the cautionary words of Fleming. He warned against the wanton use of antibiotics. The medical profession, with encouragement from drug profiteers has developed means of justification for antibiotic abuse. The Oxycontin debacle is merely an iceberg's tip of dishonesty and profiteering under the guise of patient care. Decades of antibiotic abuse also have bitter fruit that were predicted.
16
The situation will become far worse before it gets any better. Lax manufacturing regulations in India mean that pharmaceutical manufacturing plants discharge their untreated wastewater, usually containing several types of antibiotics, into local streams and marshes. They've been doing this for years, and I think we are only now seeing part of the result of a biome grown immune to modern antibiotics, just waiting for accidental contact to spread. We may be chasing pan-immune viruses, bacteria and fungi for the next century.
18
It is a fungus that is killing off the amphibians, rendering a number of frog species extinct.
17
@Susan. That’s one of the first things I thought of when reading the article.
1
@Susan
And the bees!
3
Good! Another sensationalistic end-of-the-world disease thriller. I'd almost forgotten about ebola, SARS, west nile, bird flu, and swine flu...
6
@Tad R.
SARS and Ebola were contained because health-care and public-health workers worked hard to learn what these diseases were and how they spread. They risked their lives, and some of them lost their lives. To dismiss those diseases as sensationalist thrillers distorts this history and ignores not only the sacrifices that were made but all the other terrible deaths as well.
This article is calling for a similar effort to study and understand a unknown and threatening fungus. If it succeeds, C. auris will be added to the list of threats that mysteriously never materialized. And that's the irony of public-health work: when we succeed, it seems as though nothing happened.
3
Aren't you forgetting Zika?
1
@BFG These articles are generally written with a narrative arc that's very much like a movie's narrative arc. Having studied the ways in which Time Magazine and Newsweek covered bird flu, I found that the flu was written about very much like a serial thriller.
Your comment seems to imply that public health officials prioritize based on newspaper articles, and if that's so--if public health is answerable to journalism over and above epidemiology--then we're in a precarious position. Thankfully, I haven't found that to be so. In my experience, the public health officials I've known (who work in centers for disease control in CA and NY) generally shrug off these stories, because they serve little use for their own work while generating a paralyzing fear in the public at large. paralyzing fear, it should be noted, is the same effect that suspense thrillers generate in their audiences.
As for your charge of ignoring sacrifices, if you revisit the stories of the diseases I mentioned in my initial post I'm not sure that you'll find the deaths of disease victims treated much like a venerable sacrifice. Let's not give journalism more credit than its due.
1
global drought and the invasion of the Amazon forest by agriculture disruption may well be contributing to the appearance of fungi not seen previously by modern science.
"Soil bacterial networks are less stable under drought than fungal networks"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05516-7
but hey...not to worry...climate change is a hoax.
The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law, the integrity of our democracy and all human life.
The problem is not just Donald Trump; it’s the larger conservative political apparatus that made a conscious decision to collaborate with him.
33
Nasty little germs, who do they think they are? No respect, not even from those microscopic pipsqueaks. Maybe we’re not as big as we thought.
8
@John Doe Maybe nature has decided we are a menace and is just going to get rid of us.
While a goodly amount of the article is medically correct, its entire slant is, unfortunately, colored by an extraordinary degree of "yellow journalism" (look the term up if unfamiliar with it!).
Some of its comments are simply untrue, and some of the several investigator comments are purely hypothetical and untested.
The almost hysterical tenor of the piece does a great disservice to patients, investigator, and others.
Go to the CDC site to read about this - and then (this is somewhat sarcastically written) take courses in microbiology, pharmacology, epidemiology, infection disease control, immunology, and physiology. Then you will have at least a modicum of training to get adequate knowledge of this sort of problem.
Stay away from quacks, and those who promise to "rid you of your yeasts, fungus, and Candida". That is fraudulent, and cannot be done by anyone on this planet.
7
@Bob, what's your take on "Lamisil," the anti-toe nail fungus drug? Supposedly works if taken for 3 or 4 months? Are you saying fungus will just come back?
@Bob - Nobody could rid us of smallpox, polio, tuberculosis or bubonic plague, until they did. We can achieve just about anything, unless we start denying science and believing conspiracy theories.
5
@Bob
"Some of its comments are simply untrue."
specifics please
5
This truly is a threat; much larger than the false threats imposed by the POTUS and Fox News spewing forth lies, with their only intention is to instill fear where there is no actual "threat".
8
Could this be it? Human overpopulation corrected by a fungus? Seems fitting.
18
Thank you for publishing this. The cover up and secrecy of fugal and parasitic issues in the US seems to be either driven by Big Pharma , Big Ag or both- because clearly they are in bed together. Could this be what is creating what is called " Rope Worm " ? ( google it ) Just recently there is a mysterious death of a high profile woman in La Quinta , Ca that was called a "rare fugal infection ".. this was last week. Nowhere was it published what this infection was actually called. " Vally fever in the Coachella Valley is very present and known among the locals, and the same thing goes for the Central Valley in California. All this wide spread fungi/yeast/bacteria and its' issues are truly treated in a hush hush manor in California. Just try to find an infectious disease specialist here that will even take any of this seriously - let alone a Primary Care doctor. Cover up after cover up after turning a blind eye. Again, the NY Times write about something that is important, truly. Thank you.
14
NYC outbreak of Candida auris linked to 45% mortality
Publish date: September 12, 2018
Author(s):
Mark S. Lesney
MDedge News
In the intensive case-patient analysis conducted by the New York State Health Department, 21 cases were from seven hospitals in Brooklyn, 16 were from three hospitals and one private medical office in Queens, 12 were from five hospitals and one long-term acute care hospital in Manhattan, and 1 was from a hospital in the Bronx. The remaining clinical case was identified in a western New York hospital in a patient who had recently been admitted to an involved Brooklyn hospital.
NY Times reporters; Please provide current list of names of faculties which harbor Candida auris. Thank you!
7
@KWW
I believe my brother-in-law died from this in Spain - one year ago. He died in 10 days in intensive care in the best hospital in Madrid as a FUNGUS massively invaded his lungs, which were already compromised due to a genetic condition.
They did everything! His own son is a Pulmonologist, so obviously the medical team was the best. But NOTHING could be done.
I can readily believe that this kills nearly 50% of those infected. RAPIDLY!
It was a tremendous shock to the whole family! He was set to be married the very next month.
2
I have said this elsewhere in the thread, but the infection you are describing is almost certainly NOT the result of any yeast species (like Candida). Many other medically important fungi exist and can, as you relate, be aggressive pulmonary pathogens. I am sorry to hear this unfortunate story, but we must be careful not to get fast and loose with the facts even as we take this emerging pathogen seriously.
1
PS: The common name for all candida is “yeast”. Can’t make bread, beer and wine without it.
2
Candida auris is entirely different from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is used for wine, bread, and beer.
Your comment is like saying bats and dolphins are the same because they’re both mammals.
5
@Mark F
Correct, except these types of cadida are resistant, meaning they aren't adequately controlled by being eaten or killed by other microbes in the human microbiome in these many people and/or patients causing the candida to infect the blood and tissues and cause illness, and when those patients become sick from the imbalance there's no drug in the hospitals' toolbox to save the infected person
Let's not forget antibiotic resistant tuberculosis (TB).
https://www.who.int/redirect-pages/mega-menu/countries
558 000new cases of MDR/RR-TB estimated in 2017
Direct costs (in 2016 U.S. dollars) average from $18,000 to treat drug-susceptible TB to $513,000 to treat the most drug-resistant form of the disease (XDR TB).When including productivity losses (e.g., lost income) experienced by patients while undergoing treatment, costs are even higher.
https://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/drtb/default.htm
6
Looks like the same “free enterprise” system that gave us OxyContin?
7
Thanks for the information. I just cancelled my elective surgery as I'd rather suffer from a bum ankle than enter any hospital! Nasty way to die!
Since I cherish planet earth I can see the future for homo sapiens is crashing, just hope it happens fast enough to save some of the flora and fauna .Poor kids...
12
After reading this frightening article and the commentary, I, who have no medical background, am wondering if fecal transplants could be a solution to this problem? The NYT has had some recent, excellent articles on the highly touted benefits of this procedure on repairing gut health. Could this be a solution?
6
@pinksoda One hopes that there are researchers some where who will seek a cure and not just a patent.
1
@pinksoda unfortunately, it doesn't look like fecal transplants would work here. Those are for addressing what is essentially a gastrointestinal problem: If you don't have the right balance of "good" bacteria in your intestines, it can provide an opportunity for a harmful bacteria (usually C. difficile) to take over, which can cause lots of problems, as you know. The fecal transplant attempts to replenish the populations of the good bacteria, which are then present in a high enough proportion that they can fight off the C. diff and get the person's microbiome back on track. Fungal infections like Candida auris are rooted much more deeply in the body—basically, cleaning up your intestines won't help if the fungus is already in your blood and organs.
@pinksoda
No. We all have the yeast and its cousins in our guts normally, and they will be in a fecal transplant. And the way things work, a person's individual normal microbiome will predominate shortly after a transplant
My experience working in healthcare quality and safety for 20+ years is that while there are individuals who try to improve quality and safety, systemic change for the good only happens when there is a significant financial incentive. For this reason, when the CDC and hospital admins keep these outbreaks secret, they do the public great harm. Awareness of such outbreaks, along with immediate public reporting could spur enough outrage to lead to increased funding for research in this area, as well as, increased attempts by hospitals and nursing home to contain the infection. What the CDC shows here, is that we can longer trust them to keep us safe, just as we can no longer trust the FAA. In both cases, these agencies are bending to the will of the industry to continue to profit at the expense of their customers. That should be a crime.
20
Bacteria are "rebelling"? They are out for "revenge"? Who knew that simple bacteria had emotions similar to humans. I thought they would be adapting or mutating by the selection pressures of popular antibiotics.
6
Scared enough to do something about it? Here is how. Strengthen your immune system, by eliminating what weakens you and adding what strengthens you.
If a certain food gives you a rash, drop it. Mercilessly. I dropped wheat, cashews, and hazelnuts. (I can have 100% sprouted wheat.)
If food makes you tired. Drop it. No excuses. I dropped all beans except fava, adzuki, and black beans.
If food makes you hungry and crave for more, drop it. I dropped all cereal (even the organic ones made out of grains that are otherwise healthy for me).
If food hurts, drop it or at least lower the intake. I reduced sugar, dairy, potatoes, and beef, and banned chardonnay.
I added turmeric, cayenne pepper, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, and flax seed to my oatmeal breakfast. I take a garlic pill daily and exercise regularly.
My doctor need not worry about me.
6
@Marc This is my general approach as well - I do what I can to be as resilient as I can. But one difference may be that I don't believe that all the things I do to support a healthy immune system will save me. I just hope to postpone the fight I won't win in the end.
3
@Marc Your comments are silly but do a good job of demonstrating the fallacy that we can in anyway live in isolation from ecological and biological systems that make up our lives. We pretend we can avoid these systems are our peril.
3
@Marc
If a food gives you a rash, and you drop it, isn't that allowing your body to remain weak? The reaction was a weakness in your immune system, in your case, to wheat cashews and hazelnuts, so avoiding those entirely will merely allow your body to remain weak and susceptible to reactions from these foods.
All allergies are weaknesses in the immune system, many are caused by avoiding foods (known foods, like wheat, dairy, beef, fat, etcetera) or foods that our parents didn't raise us eating, including nuts.
If your aim is to strengthen your immune system, the reasonable course would be to introduce those foods to the body in a limited and increasing fashion so an actual "immune strengthening" takes place over time. Avoiding them only reinforces the weakness that exists.
Just once It would be nice to read through the comments section on a health issue story without it devolving into the pedantic or the reactionary. Always with the stating of the obvious ninnyism: “maintain a healthy BMI, avoid sugar.” Or endless government as the enemy memes: “defund the CDC!” Ugh.
It’s true our over reliance on chemicals has had unintended consequences, but the facts are not everyone can afford to eat organic and farmers operate at razor thin margins. Call up a seed company and try to buy a bag of corn or soybean without azoles on the seeds. Most seed houses don’t even carry untreated seeds. If you do find them, a 50lb bag will cost you $5-$10 more than treated seeds.
Maybe a larger portion of the U.S. farm subsidies we tax payers fund should be earmarked to help farmers offset that cost. After that, we can move on to address the millions of tons of glyphosate-based chemicals sprayed in the field after our hard won non-treated seeds have germinated.
7
Since it is food production that makes money over the use of antibiotics which make them useless, the underlying danger is that it is profitable to sell dangerous foods, It is more profitable to use cheap labor overseas and thereby preventing local workers for earning money, It is very profitable to manufacture and sell armaments to kill people than spend the money on health and education and infrastructure maintenance. In this way, making lots of money to make life on the planet less sustainable is heading to kill us all. The basis for solving these problems seems to lay in the direction of controlling the making money in creating them. The solutions are not obvious nor easy but where they may be is rather obvious.
9
Exposure exposure, exposure. Nowadays, after almost 2/3 of a century living, I usually, wipe, wash or cut off out the parts on cheese or meat with the bluish greenish mold (the black, after watching a show about a debilitating fungal blood disorder, ONLY now do I throw out the whole piece)
2
@Capt. Pisqua
The mold is, in fact, safe to eat albeit unpleasant.
You have to be very medically ill, or do something really strange, to get infected with most yeast and fungi.
Just as today's paleontologists discuss the Mexican crater Chicxulub regarding the extinction of the dinosaurs, perhaps sentient beings of the future will discuss drug-resistant bacteria.
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@Lisa Mann
If it were just as a single factor such as the failure of antibiotics that ends´dangers life on the planet I would retain a bit of optimism as to human survival but there seems to be a collective of unified efforts to make sure that current Earth life faces removal. The loss of anti-biotics, the eagerness of India and Pakistan to obliterate each other in a nuclear fashion, the global warming which is twice as fast in Canada as the rest of the world wherein masses of unfrozen methane are rapidly emerging, the huge death of insects and birds and much of wildlife on land and sea and the most peculiar inaction of the somewhat intelligent human leaders to grasp the clear evidence that the end of everybody is at stake. It seems to be a coordinated plan.
Ah, the pathogen of the moment. I am sure this has been going on for ages. Let us ask the question of what it is that has caused this normal commensal to jump to a new habitat. Where in the human body is it predominant. How is it transported from an external to internal human habitat. What is common amongst the people who are systemically infected etc.
How about family members of the infected folk. Have they ever been infected? What’s the hygiene route? Soap and water? We can’t really wash our hands with Clorox.
The spread of nasty bugs world wide is inevitable. Let’s focus of how to cultivate a personal, human environment that is of advantage to us and not the bugs. It’s time research started focusing on how to maintain an internal human environment that poses a distinct advantage to our survival, with all the ‘nasty’ colonies around. Can we stop focusing on behaving like a military organization and arming ourselves with an arsenal of drug missiles aimed at killing entire populations? It is ironic that the medical world thinks unfortunately like war machines. It’s no wonder that illness continues to plague our society. The key is to maintain all populations, germs and humans in balance. That balance cannot be achieved through anihilation of one colony of bugs without causing another to grow larger and pose new problems. The idea is to figure out what the threshold safe number for each kind of bug is, that can live without destroying the host. A symbiosis of needs.
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After reading this informative article, I can't help but think what is in store for US citizens and the world as Trump turns over pork inspection to the processing plants, removing meat inspectors to "save" money. Nothing like making a horrific situation a catastrophic nightmare. Can we wait until 2020 elections? What else is this administration going to do to a food system crippled by the profit for me-death to the rest of you system? Can it get worse? I suspect the answer is 'yes'.
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There is nothing new in this story. This fight between Pathogen and host is going on since the dawn of time and is not going to stop anytime soon. The 13th Century Bubonic Plague finished off 1/3rd the population of Europe, killing 80 % of the victims who contracted it within days. Smallpox was another disease that killed 80 % of all children that contracted it, the remaining carried scars, blindness of deafness for life. Smallpox killed 300-500 million people through history. Polio was another pathogen that wrecked havoc, it first appeared in the US in 1894, by the 1930s and 1940s, American parents were too scared to send their children out to swimming pools or public places. Polio paralyzed 100s of thousands of children, often for life. Mankind developed immunity to most of these diseases and controlled them by using Vaccines, Antibiotics and killing hosts or controlling the way the disease spreads. Recent epidemics like AIDS and Ebola have been brought under control quicker and quicker because we understand more, have more tools and respond sooner. Brazil has understood that Zika spreads through mosquitoes so intensive spraying where Mosquitoes breed is now done. If your immune system is compromised, something or the other is going to get you sooner or later, whether is a Bacteria or a Fungi. But man keeps developing newer and newer strategies and soon MRSA and Candida will be of historical interest like Smallpox or Bubonic Plague.
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@Rahul
You mentioned Plague and Smallpox, those are diseases from a bacteria not normally present in the body. Candida Aurus is a fungus/yeast normally present in the body. The problem is it's become mutated and become stronger than the other fungi outside of the human body, therefore if reintroduced to the body it can take over and kill "the host" because nothing seems to exist that will stop it. Because we refuse to require drug companies to do research for public health as a condition of being enriched by said public, and we refuse to require doctors to flat-out refuse to over-prescribe antibiotics for common colds, and we refuse to sanction hospitals for non-reporting infection rates, and we refuse to fund and empower the CDC and NIH to keep reasonable records of said infection rates at hospitals nation wide because populist spendthrifts distract us with tribalist non-issues and anti- "Deep State" rhetoric, which makes us acquiesce to cutting vital funding for government services like to those agencies. Among many others, not just those.
But I digress.
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Very scary. The 63 year old actress Denise DuBarry Hay recently died of a fungal infection at UCLA Medical Center.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2019/03/23/producer-entrepreneur-philanthropist-denise-dubarry-hay-dies-63/3258666002/
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Global warming seems less ominous after reading this. Made my day.
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@john
Why? Candid Aurus is a yeast, yeast is more active at higher temperatures, and if there are larger swaths of the planet with temperatures conducive to the growth of yeast that happens to be mutated to kill us, that's probably more of a worry, not less.
-Debbie Downer
:-D
The plague killed the majority of Europe's population during the Dark Ages. Could we be entering another dark age now?
Stephen King wrote "The Stand" about a super-flu virus that virtually wiped out humanity world-wide. The authorities in his novel tried to keep it a secret. It didn't work.
Secrecy will not succeed in today's real-life scenario about the growing danger of the spread of Candida auris. It will only do harm.
Will hospitals have to resort to flame-throwers to clean out the rooms of the victims of Candida auris after they die? Will the bodies of the victims of Candida auris have to be burned to keep the disease from spreading?
This is a consequence of the over-use of antibiotics for things they shouldn't be used for.
Is this humanity's "Waterloo"?
Only time will tell
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We can start fighting these dangerous bacteria now by not demanding antibiotics for a " cold " or a " flu ". We have become so strident in our demands. And physicians, although knowing better but fearing a big ' lawsuit ' give in. They prescribe antibiotics like azithromycin - for a cold!
But seems like it's already late because of global interconnectivity and the vicious cycle between unnecessary preventive antibiotcs, to prescribing unnecessary antibiotics, to real need of antibioctics with bacteria resistant to them, the final leg being no antibotics that can overcome these virulent strains of bacteria. Irony is the starting point was a self-limiting virus and a healthy farm animal with friendly bacteria in it's microsomes!
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@NNI
Agreed. Also, we need to as a society outlaw the use of antibiotics as a growth aid in the production of meat for food. I.E., Beef, pork and chicken. The use of these antibiotics in food production not only allows the animal to grow larger and faster, it prevents the animal itself from developing immunity to the mutated virus or fungus, and logic does dictate that eating of the animal flesh from an animal that's developed immunity to said bacteria or fungus is the most effective way of introducing those immunities and (presumably) dead and harmless infective agents to the body, therefore fostering immunity in humans through the food system. Not to mention the waste from the animals inundating the environment with antibiotics not meant to be there.
That is the way our bodies have become immune to other environmental perils since humans began, so it seems to me a reasonable course of action, but a law would have to be passed because the animals will grow smaller and slower, affecting the 'bottom line' of ranchers. We'd need to probably subsidize them for a time during the transition to "natural" growth practices. IMO.
Mankind's hubris in his approach to nature is as unsinkable as the Titanic.
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To me, this touches on a primary function of government.
It would be reassuring to frame this as a contest between greed and public health. But I think it's more complex--and vexing.
It's a contest between public health and a safe, reliable, affordable food supply.
Both are equally important to the world's population. Apparently, crop science has not yet developed an alternative to fungicides that meets the safety/reliability/affordability requirements of our food supply.
Requiring reliable, timely data (from agriculture, hospitals and other key sectors involved in this puzzle) is an essential first step.
This is a fundamental role of government.
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What undermines modern medicine in part is the supremacy of the profit motive in decisions to fund research. Instead of seeking out what really needs to be done from the point of protecting people all too commonly we have seen truckloads of research dollars used to come up with new patent protected products to replace perfectly good treatments no longer contributing to profits due to expiry of patent protection. Ah, you say the cure is never to let patent protection expire? For an industry that has been jacking drug prices by multiples even as costs have been pretty flat? I'd like to see a much bigger role for government in drug research so it could be focused on where the actual needs are.
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A friend of mine contracted candida 2 years ago. She went on the "candida diet"- basically no sugar or refined carbs at all. Her stool samples tested negative after 30 days.
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@bh There are over 20 species of Candida that can cause infection in humans. Each is slightly different, and cannot always be treated the same. Did your friend have C. albicans, C. auris, or another Candida species?
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@bh, good for her, sometimes it’s easier to change who we are than changing everything else around us. I did something similar after I found I had an incurable lymphoma years ago. Eating out is a pain and dining companions think I’m a boor but resigning to something beyond our control is sort of humbling. Makes me wonder about a lot of other things too.
I think the rush to judgement on hospitals which have suppressed information on this fungal outbreak may be at least partially unfounded. What were the hospitals to do? Shut down completely and wrap the premises in Mylar? They would all go the way of St. Vincent’s in Greenwich Village - out of business forever.
When nothing substantive is known, and only patients with severe immunodeficiency seem to be affected, causing a panic may not be advisable. I don’t say that more transparency couldn’t have been helpful, but when no information is available, what are they to say? I’m sure the matter ought to have been managed with greater dispatch, and denial surely played a serious part. Also business and economic concerns may have cost lives, which obviously is a terrible tragedy. But when you don’t know anything, I don’t know how you craft a useful message to the public, that allows you to go on saving the vast majority of lives that depend on the hospitals.
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@Mr. Little
JUDGE the Legislatures!
The absence of laws here is intolerable!
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First and foremost, we need more science majors who go to medical school or graduate school and focus on infectious diseases and research. VCs in Patagonia fleece vests cherry pick blockbuster drugs for profit and not for the overall good of society.
My question is after reading this article: is it possible to eradicate C. Auris in a hospital or medical facility? If the British infectious disease physician failed that feat given the treatment of hydrogen peroxide, what can be done?
The dance between for-profit hospitals, the corporations that now run teaching and non-teaching hospitals and the CDC must stop.
New guidelines and requirements of and by the CDC are needed for announcing the presence of C. Auris in medical facilities and care facilities; when the facilities are required to report; and, steps taken to eradicate C. auris.
I think the reporters served the public good more than the CDC!
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@Kathryn There are plenty of graduates studying antibiotic resistance. It takes 10 years to test/develop/produce new antibiotics. It is not PROFITABLE for most pharmaceutical companies to prioritize, as there are a lot of dead ends. As one of those science majors with a doctorate in microbiology, we, as a society, need to stop abusing antimicrobials. Farmers should use less in agriculture. Animals should not be raised in crowded environments that promote disease. Humans should eat more plants and less meat in general.
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So in order to get the data, the CDC has to agree to keep the affected hospitals secret. Completely understandable. I would do the same if I were the CDC. That means it is time for a new law, to change motivations. If CDC declares something to be an “urgent threat” there ought to be legal sanctions for keeping an outbreak secret from the public. Maybe triple damages? Maybe make it a crime?
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@Cynical Jack
in this instance the "urgent threat" is human caused climate change and the Republican party's 'science denying' as conservative ideological cant
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You do a great service by indicating that agricultural uses of antimicrobials and antibiotics have important and negative consequences to both the human and wild animal populations.
The PEW foundation study on the Impact of Industrial Farm Animal Production provided clear and important evidence that antimicrobial and antibiotic use in farm animals was contributory to antibiotic resistance in humans. This article suggests that agricultural fungicide use is causative in this devastating disease.
We ignore this observation at our peril.
FYI- I was a Commissioner on the Pew Study. Alan M Goldberg, Professor of Toxicology JHU.
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How can we learn which nursing homes in Illinois have had reported cases? I got into those facilities a lot and would like to know when there is increased risk. I recognize it's always increased risk and need to take precautions but would like to know when there have already been outbreaks
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After reading this article, I really have to wonder about this insidious fungus and how prevalent the strains are in nursing homes around the city. The cause of alarm reading the first paragraph owing to the fact that the Mt. Sinai, in Brooklyn, is our neighborhood hospital, the hospital used by the nursing home for emergency situations, where my mother eventually died. Further reflection that this fungus is virtually indestructible, is material for the theory that unchecked C. auris and many other fungi could certainly contribute to untimely deaths in nursing homes as of late.
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Eat organic as much as you can. This will promote the expansion of organic (pesticide free) farms and practices. It will keep the pesticides out of your body as well.
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@Mary
I'm with you!! I just told my husband that we will not by any produce or meat that is not organic. I have a compromised immune system.
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Is it possible that the very techniques used to sanitise hospitals (spraying with hydrogen peroxide etc) have succeeded in killing off less hard organisms, leaving the rarer, more resistant species to proliferate? In addition to reducing overuse of antibiotics and antimicrobials (such as hand sanitisers over soap and water), can we modify ways to sanitise/clean hospitals and our homes?
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My doctor prescribed antibiotics when I got a bladder infection for the second time in six months. I asked whether there was any other option (knowing my brother in law had developed a gluten intolerance because of antibiotics overuse). To my surprise the doctor said there was an alternative in my case: drinking cranberry juice - it contains an acid that dissolves the particles in my urine on which bacteria grow.
To this day I wonder why he did not propose this in the first place.
I drink my cranberry juice daily and have not had a bladder infection in the last four years.
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@Marc
The cranberry juice may also be promoting the growth of beneficial microbes https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6064808/
Keeping these occurrences secret does not only imperil the lives of potential "clients" of the affected hospitals; it also blocks public awareness of the overall problem, decreasing the likelihood that there will be bans on widespread fungicide spraying.
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exactly! And for those just to visit someone in the hospital! And why didn't they get more samples from the neglected 72 year old man at the hospital in New York?! They quote gradually discharged him and quote. I understand the daughter did not want him to be a guinea pig but he may be the path to a cure because he was resistant. so much imcompetence surrounding this whole thing!
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@Charlie Hospitals are calculating how much revenue they would miss out on if people refrained from elective surgery.
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@Charlie
There were (and are) never going to be such bans with your current crop of right wing politicians and your horde of lobbyists. That is a pointless dream.
YOUR not knowing does nothing to imperil your life, so long as the hospital knows and takes what action is possible. There is no action you can take, since even the extreme action of choosing to die rather than go into hospital might not stop you contracting then bug.
YOUR knowing does increase the risk of fear, panic, and general confusion creating a perfect environment for internet con men to fleece the fearful.
I would much rather this article had not been written since I think it unlikely to be of any help in addressing the problem but of great help to the sharks and charlatans.
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A perfect storm may be on the horizon. Not only are the conditions present for a pandemic, but we have governments with political agendas that have hobbled the capability of public health systems to respond. Instead, our leaders bemoan the cancer-causing properties of windmills.
2175
@SkepticaL. Well, such a pandemic would resolve our global overpopulation problem and perhaps our global warming problem as well by collapsing economies all over the planet.
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@SkepticaL Trump titing at windmills? How embelmatic that he would claim windmills cause cancer.
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@SkepticaL Pandemic... All the new diseases introduced in the last decades (AIDS, Ebola, Lyme, Swine Flu, Legionnaires) are man-made and there is abundant evidence of it online for those who have eyes to see and the ability to sift wheat from chaff as well as the COURAGE to prefer disturbing truths over comforting lies (that would, of course, include very few regular readers of the NY Times). The quality of allopathic care provided for the average citizen is horrendous. Do you ever stop to wonder why elites are routinely living to 100 and beyond these days and congress critters run around like spring chickens into their 90's? Because they have access to SPACE-AGE medical tech paid for with our tax dollars, that's why. They won't even LET you leave those clinics until you are all fixed up. That's the level of health care the public should have since we PAID for it. They can fix your DNA mutations and remove your heavy metals and many other things just like that. The public get mostly ANCIENT, invasive and defective medicine and procedures. But some tech like CRISPR is leaking out to the public and the domain of alternative medicine. Have you heard about all the alternative doctors whose MURDERS have gone unsolved over the past decade? Over 100 of them! Don't wait for the NY Times to tell you about it, though.
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Everyone should read Margaret Atwood's book "Oryx & Crake." It's dystopian fiction but the way things are going on this planet it seems like it will wind about being a factual essay on what is going on in the world. Ms. Atwood is not only an excellent writer but she is prescient.
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Welcome to Earth 2.0! Warmer, Wetter, and Fungi Friendly!
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