Superbugs Require Super Drugs

In the fifty or so years since Alexander Fleming developed Penicillin, bacterial infections have become a mere nuisance. Almost everyone, at one time or another, has been prescribed some sort of antibiotic. Diseases and infections that used to be fatal are now very treatable, all thanks to the single mistake of a biologist. Antibiotics are the miracle drug.

Imagine, though, that one day you get a bacterial infection, and the antibiotics don’t work. You take more, and different, and combinations, and there is absolutely nothing your doctor can give you to combat this infection. Say hello to superbugs.

These sorts of infections are out there; MRSA, C. difficile, even certain strains of TB. Over time, bacteria have grown resistant to the antibiotics we used to treat them, rendering the miracle drug null and void. And the problem is only growing. The CDC recently announced that deaths from MRSA, a resistant strain of a fairly common staph infection, have officially reached 19,000+ per year, killing more people than AIDS. And C. difficile, a less known infection of the colon, kills three times as many people per year as MRSA.

Youtube Video: CNN report. MRSA - the New AIDS.

But scientists are fighting back. According to an article in Science Daily early this year, a group of scientists at the University of Paris Descartes have discovered a new enzyme, Acetyltransferase, which allows bacteria to gain resistance to multiple antibiotics by changing the shape of the active site. The active site is the place on the enzyme that allows it to bind to the antibiotic and break it down; each antibiotic requires a differently shaped active site to connect. Nearly all the strains of bacteria currently defined as superbugs have this enzyme, which accounts for their ability to break down multiple antibiotics.

Now that they’ve found it, what to do with it? Antibiotics are, from the perspective of a pharmaceutical company, a waste of money – they’re expensive to make, and have a much lower profit margin than most drugs. Needless to say, these companies aren’t working to replace the antibiotics that are no longer effective against infection. However, enzyme inhibitors – chemicals that would disrupt the bacteria’s ability to produce Acetyltransferase, would be much less expensive to manufacture and distribute. In it’s ideal form, the enzyme would be delivered as a supplement pill or syrup with the antibiotic, letting drugs that have become ineffective once again battle infection. Scientists are currently working on creating this inhibitor. Keep a look out!

For more information, see the Science Daily Article, and How Stuff Works.

Popularity, or High School Never Ends

Twilight.

You can’t get away from it. The book, and the three others completing the saga, are all over the book store – Box sets make great Christmas gifts! It’s in commercials, the movie theater, the news. The screaming fan girls are deafening.

Naturally, I resisted. I’m a grown woman, first and foremost, and second the sorts of novels I read are the written equivalent of independent art films. But it got hard to ignore; everyone I knew was reading it. There were copies of it in my dorm room, my house back home; people were calling me and asking what page I was on. It got to be like MySpace – it was easier for me to just get it over with than to constantly defend my choice not to read it. So I read it. I swallowed twelve dollars and thirty-five cents for the first book, borrowed the rest. I finished the (at the time) trilogy in about three weeks.

I was mildly horrified.

These, these were the books people couldn’t stop talking about? This was the book that had won the New York Times Editor’s Choice Award, Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year? This was the trio that had spent a combined 143 weeks on the New York Times best seller’s list?

I was befuddled.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re not terrible books. The plot is fairly intriguing, the characters aren’t entirely flat, the action moves well enough. But I wouldn’t say they were great, I would never have used half the words people threw at me – fantastic, amazing, addictive! I’d expected to, if not enjoy them, at least understand the fanatical following the series had gained once I’d read the books. Instead, I was decidedly more confused.

Sadly, this is an experience I’m having more and more often. Books that are camping out on the NYT best seller’s list are increasingly less well-written, less developed, less complex. The quality of titles making it to the top is steadily declining. It’s a numbers game; these lists have nothing to do with critically evaluating literature, with analyzing the style of writing or the character development or the rise and climax of a storyline. The bestseller list is exactly that, what’s selling the most copies; it’s what people are reading most. To sell well and be famous, to be acclaimed no longer requires an exceptional grasp of the English language, or talent, or study; the landscape of literature has, disturbingly enough, become high school. It’s a popularity contest.

It got me thinking about evolution. Darwin believed that evolution “brings about change and adaptation, but it does not necessarily lead to progress, and it never leads to perfection” (Appleman 23). Mating, especially in humans, is a popularity contest; the smartest and the strongest can easily be outstripped by the most charismatic, the most attractive. For example, the most intelligent members of the human species, a trait that should be exceptionally desirable, considering the state of civilization, are often ridiculed, accosted, and deemed some of the least desirable mates available.

If evolution was truly selecting for the best, the brightest, the most capable, wouldn’t nerds be pretty high up there?

Civilization has only recently, in terms of evolution, advanced to a point that no longer requires strong specimens with quick reflexes, ready to kill. Without open warfare and exposure to environmental dangers, the weakest and least intelligent of the species are no longer being picked off by natural selection; instead, they’re mating and procreating just as often as the strongest, and in many cases more often than the least intelligent. And despite the relatively short period, the fall of intelligence is already becoming apparent.

I wonder what Darwin would have to say about evolution in an environment that does not physically challenge and eliminate the weak elements. The theory of Natural Selection, as proposed by Darwin in The Origin of Species, is a process that leads to “preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations,” but with what I perceive, at least, to assume that nature is given power enough to decided upon and reject certain variations (Appleman 112). In terms of evolution, we’ve entered a new era, one in which nature is no longer given room to select, to remove weak elements.

Clip from the film “Idiocracy”. Released 1 Sept 2006. Twentieth Century Fox.

The above clip, from the film Idiocracy, is a rather humorous representation of how the Theory of Natural Selection may apply in the future, and with what results. Despite the comedy, the idea that Natural Selection will now benefit those who reproduce most often, instead of the strongest, fastest, etc. is not without logic. If unfit breeders and their offspring are not eliminated by the elements, then those who procreate most often will have the most impact on the continued evolution of the species.

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Works Cited.

Mayr, Ernst. “Who Is Darwin?” Darwin. Ed. Philip Appleman. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 23.

Darwin, Charles. “The Origin of Species.” Darwin. Ed. Philip Appleman. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. 112.

Get-Out-Of-Poverty-Free Card

Poor? Starving? Struggling to survive? Turn any lesser metal into gold!

This was only one of several outlandish claims that alchemists made in the 16th and 17th centuries, during a time of desperation when such suggestions earned them fame and fortune. Alchemists of this period claimed to possess the ability to not only turn lesser metals to gold, but also produce the philosopher’s stone, a mythical crystal whose properties included curing every known ailment, bestowing spiritual enlightenment, and granting eternal life.

The idea is hardly a difficult one to market. For our presentation we plan to sell the irresistible trappings of life and eternal wealth to the historical audience, and use to basic principles of the philosophy of alchemy to explain how such a substance could exist. To a crowd in abject destitution, the relevance was clear; little was more alluring than a get-out-of- poverty card.

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For links to hundreds of primary-source texts on alchemy, click.

For a quick definition of alchemy and its history, click.

The Most Valuable Commodity On Earth

Mild shock. That was my first reaction to Michael Manson’s “How to Teach Science to the Pope” (found in our course readings). Listen to the media tell it, the Catholic Church is opposed to science in fairly every form, from genetic modification to evolution to the Big Bang, every last little bit of it. Should’ve figured – you can’t believe everything you see on TV.

Turns out, the Vatican’s acceptance of science is nearly a complete one-eighty from the media portrayal. Not only do they accept many scientific views and work to intersect scientific discoveries with the Catholic belief system, they have various institutions of their own, composed of scientists ranging from clergymen to atheists, to pioneer discoveries and discuss their applications to faith. And it makes a lot of sense, once you hear it. Consolmango, a Jesuit brother and astronomer for the Vatican Observatory, explains in the article that “the idea that the universe is worth studying just because it’s worth studying is a religious idea. If you think the universe is fundamentally good and that it’s an expression of a good God, then studying how the universe works is a way of becoming intimate with the Creator. It’s a kind of worship” (Manson 1).

It’s not a bad point. In many facets of science, the goal is to better humanity – to improve on technology, to save lives, to better the human condition. The study of the universe, however, the pursuit of understanding our creation, cannot feasibly do any of these things. It is, as Kurt Vonnegut would say, pure research; research is not “looking for a better cigarette filter or a softer facial tissue or a longer-lasting house paint, God help us” (Vonnegut 35). Pure research is when “men are paid to increase knowledge, to work toward no end but that”. And “nothing generous about it. New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on Earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become” (Vonnegut 36).

Perhaps Vatican science is right on the money.

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Looking for more? On the discoverability of the universe, and it’s relationship to humanity, spend six minutes here.

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Sources:

Mason, Michael. "How to Teach Science to the Pope." Discover Magazine. August 18, 2008. http://discovermagazine.com/2008/sep/18-how-to-teach-science-to-the-pope

Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat’s Cradle. New York: Dell Publishing Company, Inc, 1963.