Bad bugs' resistance growing, expert says
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Bad bugs' resistance growing, expert says
Date:
Tue, 5 Nov 2002
From:
Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide
Regulation
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
Tuesday, 20 August, 2002, 23:34 GMT 00:34 UK
Bad bugs' resistance growing, expert says
N.O. native, author to speak at Loyola
11/04/02
By John Pope, Staff writer
Mark Plotkin is a seasoned scientist with a strong sense of academic rigor, but the New Orleans native and his co-author had an unorthodox ideal when they were writing their nonfiction book about bacteria that defy conventional treatment.
"We wanted to write it like a Stephen King novel, which is the way it is: bad bugs on the run," Plotkin said. "Ten years ago, they turned on us, and they did it with a vengeance."
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug-resistant bacteria kill about 40,000 Americans each year. Among the victims: Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, who died in 1990 of a strep infection.
The problem started in hospitals, where sick people gathered and microbes mingled, mutating into drug-resistant hybrids that made desperately ill people even sicker. When these patients went home, they infected their families and co-workers. People stormed their doctors' offices, demanding medicine, and time-squeezed physicians dutifully wrote prescriptions, often without knowing enough about their patients to determine whether they were doing the right thing, Plotkin said.
Even if patients got the right medication, they often stopped taking it once they felt better, giving the hardy germs a chance to develop resistance. Or they shared it with neighbors who didn't seek treatment.
As a result of all these factors, "bugs that were resistant to a few things became resistant to five or six," Plotkin said in a telephone interview from his Arlington, Va., office. "The pace of resistance is picking up with a vengeance; it's like the bugs are working together."
This situation gave rise to "The Killers Within: The Deadly Rise of Drug-Resistant Bacteria," which Plotkin wrote with Vanity Fair writer Michael Shnayerson. He is discussing his work today at 7 p.m. in Roussel Hall on the Loyola University campus. Admission is free for students, faculty and teachers and $10 apiece for everyone else.
Plotkin, 47, holds a doctorate in biological conservation from Tufts University. He is an ethnobotanist, a specialist whose field combines cultural anthropology and botany in a study of the relations between plants and people. His work has taken him around the world, resulting in such books as "Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature's Healing Secrets" and "Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice."
"Mother Nature is the most important source of medicines -- always has been, always will be," Plotkin said. "We screw with Mother Nature at our peril."
His latest book grew out of research on "Medicine Quest."
"I had a chapter on microbes," Plotkin said. "I looked for a good book on this and decided to write one. The more I wrote, the more alarmed I got."
How does Plotkin cope in this microbial battlefield? By washing his hands frequently, but not to the point of being phobic about it; by being sure to eat food such as yogurt that restore compounds that antibiotics might kill; and by eating organic food.
"All food has bacteria," he said. "Organic food doesn't have drug-resistant bacteria."
. . . . . .
John Pope can be reached at jpope@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3317.
© The Times-Picayune. Used with permission.
Copyright 2002 New OrleansNet LLC. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/newsstory/plotkin04.html
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