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Swedish exchange students who studied in India and in central Africa returned from their sojourns with an increased diversity of antibiotic resistance genes in their gut microbiomes. The research is published 10 August in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
In the study, the investigators found a 2.6-fold increase in genes encoding resistance to sulfonamide, a 7.7-fold increase in trimethoprim resistance genes, and a 2.6-fold increase in resistance to beta-lactams, all of this without any exposure to antibiotics among the 35 exchange students. These resistance genes were not particularly abundant in the students prior to their travels, but the increases are nonetheless quite significant.
...
in fact, the increases the investigators observed in abundance and diversity of resistance genes occurred despite the fact that none of the students took antibiotics either before or during travel. The increase seen in resistance genes could have resulted from ingesting food containing resistant bacteria, or from contaminated water, the investigators write. Providing further support for the hypothesis that resistance genes increased during travel, genes for extended spectrum beta-lactamase, which dismembers penicillin and related antibiotics, was present in just one of the 35 students prior to travel, but in 12 students after they returned to Sweden.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 24 2015, @03:45AM
I am almost as widely traveled as you are. I kinda agree with you. But - fact is, we have a HUGE population that is in costant motion, around the globe. And, fact are facts. That population in motion does indeed cause disease, epidemics, and pandemics to spread much faster than it would have naturally. It causes lesser diseases to spread further than they would naturally.
Life is full of compromise, and we have compromised our ability to combat disease in exchange for some imagined economic benefits.
Personally, I am not in agreement with the goals of globalization. We can expect some serious epidemics in the not-distant future, due to that population in motion. How serious? Only time will tell.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 24 2015, @04:01AM
in exchange for some imagined economic benefits
It's not hard to imagine the concrete economic benefits in question, such as a better standard of living for the majority of humanity. And if some serious epidemic comes out in the future, we can always shut down that trade network till it blows over.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 24 2015, @04:22AM
I simply cannot imagine that any trade network will be permitted to be shut down, no matter how bad a pandemic might get. So long as there are people available to man the necessary positions to ship the goods, the network will remain open.
As for the benefits of those trade networks - those accrue almost exclusively to management. Worker's wages have been cut, while executive wages have been increased, again and again. You're aware that the typical CEO makes more money than 500 workers today? Only a lifetime ago, top executives only made as much as 40 of his workers combined.
So, the men and women on the factory floor are still going home to substandard housing, and eating subsistence rations, often times with no electricity or running water. Worse - those people have to deal with pollution in their homes, that didn't exist before the factories were brought to their third world countries. There are plenty of stories from both Africa and Asias of villages being overwhelmed with the detritus of manufacturing. Instead of walking a mile or so for water, they now have to walk ten miles, or pay exorbitant prices for water to be trucked in.
Perhaps I shouldn't have said "imagined economic benefits". I should have stuck with much older terms, like "exploiting the natives".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 24 2015, @04:44PM
I simply cannot imagine that any trade network will be permitted to be shut down, no matter how bad a pandemic might get.
Well, you have once again indicated you have trouble imagining things. An obvious situation where a trade network would get shut down, in your scenario, is when "management" or their profit is threatened by the pandemic.
So, the men and women on the factory floor are still going home to substandard housing, and eating subsistence rations, often times with no electricity or running water.
Compared to what? The thing you miss here is that their substandard housing, their subsistence rations, and their occasional lack of electricity and running water gets worse with the absence of global trade.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 24 2015, @04:55PM
Gets worse in the absence of global trade? Really? How could it be worse, if the mountains of toxic refuse didn't exist?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/04/world/asia/04pollution.html?ref=environment [nytimes.com]
http://stevendonziger.com/2014/09/30/indigenous-villagers-plan-seize-chevrons-106-million-arbitral-award-ecuador/ [stevendonziger.com]
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2009/jun/05/waste-world-environment-day [theguardian.com]
https://www.academia.edu/5340851/The_illicit_trade_of_toxic_waste_in_Africa_The_human_rights_implications_of_the_new_toxic_colonialism [academia.edu]
Again, the more proper term might be "exploitation".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 24 2015, @06:38PM
Gets worse in the absence of global trade? Really? How could it be worse, if the mountains of toxic refuse didn't exist?
Global trade isn't the only thing that makes mountains of toxic refuse. Exponentially growing human populations do as well. Increasing wealth, such as from global trade, results in lower human fertility and smaller mountains of toxic refuse.