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The California medical board is threatening to revoke the license of Dr. William Edwin Gray III for selling homeopathic sound files over the Internet that he claims—without evidence or reason—can cure a variety of ailments, including life-threatening infections such as Ebola, SARS, swine flu, malaria, typhoid, and cholera.
If that can cure me of my old age too, I'm all game! Which button must I press?
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Sound Waves for Curing Ebola - and Anything Else Too
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
And we can always supply them with a program that makes identical files
into links to a single file.
-- Larry Wall in <199709292012.NAA09616@wall.org>
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday May 28 2018, @05:19AM (4 children)
Extreme measures would be needed for 100% reduction, but very reasonable measures would us most of the way there. Enforcing hand washing alone would eliminate a lot of the problem. Banning ties goes a long way as well. They could do a lot more for room design. For example, sealing the floor tiles so nothing can grow in the cracks. Likewise, seal the places where fixtures adjoin the walls. The divider curtains should certainly be changed every time a new patient is brought in.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday May 28 2018, @06:34PM (3 children)
The hospitals that I'm aware of already enforce hand-washing, and most of the other easy steps. They often even use disposable plastic gloves. (I suppose it depends on what they're doing.)
The problem is bacteria keep evolving. Methods that were safe turn out to have holes that can be evolved through. I don't suppose they'll be able to evolve directly through disposable plastic gloves, but and indirect approach involves changes in the mode of transmission. Perhaps UV will be needed to sterilize the air.
All that said, currently I generally trust the hospitals I go to. (Not, admittedly, the waiting rooms....they need serious work.) But current safe practices won't continue to be safe, so it's important to catch the leading edge and suppress it. Of course, the basic problem is dense populations mixed with fast transportation. Without that most of these things wouldn't spread. And the very idea of a hospital is an invitation to invasive organisms. But centralized expertise is necessary, and so are sterile environments for many procedures. Also, if we were to live in sterile bubbles, we'd be attacked by our own immune systems.
There probably isn't a perfect answer, but the optimal answer seems to be to keep watching over things, catch the leading edge of changes, and don't get complacent. Also to accept that perfection doesn't happen in this universe.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday May 28 2018, @07:50PM (2 children)
Measures to kill germs outside of the body are much more sure than those to control an infection. At some point, the only way for any microbe to survive the sterilization is to evolve to a point that the human body is no longer a good environment for it. Even extremophiles have their limits and generally, the price of being able to live in the extreme condition is an inability to compete with more typical organisms when the environment is less extreme. No amount of evolution will make a microbe survive incineration.
I have seen some discussion of atomizing propylene glycol to limit airborne transmission (the PG dessicates bacteria).
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday May 28 2018, @11:44PM (1 child)
The trouble is if people have to be in that same environment. And various spores evolved to resist autoclaves...I don't know how well, but I know that was mentioned when I asked why autoclaves weren't use much anymore.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Tuesday May 29 2018, @12:52AM
Germs, even resistant ones still die in an autoclave. However, prions aren't destroyed, so surgical instruments need to be disposable anyway. Since autoclaves can be quite expensive to run and maintain, disposables are often cheaper anyway. They are, however still used for processing medical waste so it can be disposed of safely.