Seagulls Spreading Resistant Bacteria On Beaches 94
bs0d3 writes "Dr. Patrice Nordmann has disclosed the results of a small study that looked for resistant bacteria in seagull poop landing on Miami Beach in Florida. During April 2010, they collected 52 stool samples and found within them 83 isolates of gut bacteria such as E. coli. Wired's Maryn McKenna writes, 'Seven of the E. coli carried genes that direct production of CTX-M enzymes, a troublesome resistance factor that protects bacteria from the very broad category of drugs called extended-spectrum beta-lactams and that has recently spread worldwide. In addition, 14 of the E. coli were also carrying the gene for the CMY-2 enzyme, which confers the same ESBL resistance on Salmonella. Nine of the isolates were multi-drug resistant.' This has led some scientists to the conclusion that this is one avenue these bacterias are taking in human infections worldwide. The resistance factors identified in the seagull feces match ones that cause highly resistant infections in humans, and correlate with data collected on beaches in Portugal, Sweden, and France."
Landfills (Score:4, Insightful)
Open-air landfills, leftovers, old prescriptions, and seagulls. Yep.
With the exception of earthquakes and meteor strikes, all problems can be traced to human overpopulation.
"colaberates" ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only misspelled, but it's the wrong word for the job.
Humans (for now) working together collaborate.
Data from disparate sources corroborate.
Did the spell-checker take the weekend off?
Re:This just in.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can find bacteria pretty much wherever you want, and feces usually has its share of pathogens; but time was when you had to go actively hunting, and in the right places, to find antibiotic resistance at any significant level.
Re:hairless apes (Score:4, Insightful)
Both comments are equally ignorant. It is arguable that we are the universe attempting to understand itself. That is perhaps one of the highest possible destinies of space time. That said, most human beings barely aspire to know more than which way to put their underwear on (that and how to mate, endlessly.) We only hate seagulls and rats because they are intelligent and are successful in human shaped environments.
Let's get clear about this. The existence of resistant bacteria is the result of indiscriminate use of antibiotics by lazy, greedy, self serving aggro-businesses and government regulatory bodies with neither the power nor the mandate to protect our local (let alone global) environment from vast degradation by multinational corporations. This is just one more item on a list that now more than anything else resembles one of those giant cheese wheels of toilet paper unrolled. Blaming birds for this is like blaming rats for the black death in Europe. Europeans killed all the cats and old ladies because they thought they were in league with the devil. They lived in places of extreme crowding and pitiful sanitation. The rats overpopulated, the rat fleas bit both humans and rats and both became reservoirs for plague. In the end 1 in 3 people died and it was people who hand made a disaster through ignorance, superstition and acting against their own best interest. Wow, things haven't really changed all that much in 500 years.