Rivers Becoming 'Reservoirs of Disease' (bbc.com) 54
Scientists say "a reservoir of disease" is being created after discovering bacteria that naturally occur in rivers are becoming resistant to antibiotics due to the impact of sewage. From a report: Researchers at the University of Suffolk said bacterial strains found on the non-tidal section of the River Deben in Suffolk had acquired resistance by exchanging DNA with antibiotic resistant E. coli. Some bacteria have become resistant to the antibiotic carbapenem, which is used as the last line of defence in fighting infections already resistant to traditional antibiotics. Dr Nick Tucker, a microbiologist leading the research, described the discovery as "particularly worrying."
"Organisms that are currently low risk are being mixed with pathogenic organisms from sewage," he said. "We're needlessly adding pathogenic and virulence genes to bacteria found in the environment, and that could be creating a reservoir of disease." The team has been working closely with citizen scientists from the Deben Climate Centre, who have been taking water samples for two years. They have also been working with scientists at the government's CEFAS laboratories, who have helped identify the new strains that are being screened for their resistance to six of the most commonly-used antibiotics. The River Deben rises in Debenham, Suffolk, before flowing through Woodbridge and down to the North Sea.
"Organisms that are currently low risk are being mixed with pathogenic organisms from sewage," he said. "We're needlessly adding pathogenic and virulence genes to bacteria found in the environment, and that could be creating a reservoir of disease." The team has been working closely with citizen scientists from the Deben Climate Centre, who have been taking water samples for two years. They have also been working with scientists at the government's CEFAS laboratories, who have helped identify the new strains that are being screened for their resistance to six of the most commonly-used antibiotics. The River Deben rises in Debenham, Suffolk, before flowing through Woodbridge and down to the North Sea.
We fundamentally altered the ecosystem. (Score:3)
We rendered ourselves (temporarily, it would seem) immune to the microscopic living and quasi-living pathogens which are part of the (evolved) ecosystem. Evolution apparently noticed and is pushing back.
(Yes, I know - evolution hates to be anthropomorphized),
Re:We fundamentally altered the ecosystem. (Score:5, Interesting)
A fairly broad clue should have been offered by the fact that almost all antibiotics were originally copied from organisms which evolved the ability to make them in self-defence.
If bacteria and fungi have been waging biological warfare on the largest scale for hundreds of millions of years - as they have - it should have been utterly predictable that they would mostly also have evolved defences against antibiotics. Otherwise they would have been wiped out millions of years ago.
Humans have clumsily blundered into the ongoing biological war, and unsurprisingly have turned out to be completely outgunned. However our greatest liability has been our inability to organise and to act in our own self-interest as a species. Corporations and even individuals have for decades been spewing vast tonnages of antibiotics into the environment - a formula for creating resistance that could not have been bettered if it had been deliberate, which governments appear quite helpless to stop or even to reduce.
Hoping phage therapy could be part of the answer (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Phage therapy, viral phage therapy, or phagotherapy is the therapeutic use of bacteriophages for the treatment of pathogenic bacterial infections. This therapeutic approach emerged at the beginning of the 20th century but was progressively replaced by the use of antibiotics in most parts of the world after the Second World War. Bacteriophages, known as phages, are a form of virus that attach to bacterial cells and inject their genome into the cell. The bacteria's production
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E. Coli, heard that and said, "Oh, Yeah? Hold my beer..." and now we have E. Coli happily living in waterways that people bath in and drink from.
When I was a teen, mountain climbing in Colorado, unless there were sheep in th
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Re:We fundamentally altered the ecosystem. (Score:5, Informative)
Well that example - the River Deben - is from England and the UK has its own major problems with sewage.
Up until around 1970, local authorities were responsible for organising the supply and subsequent recycling of drinking water. Unsurprisingly, some areas did a better job of it than others. Then Ted Heath's government (I think) created regional "water boards" to handle the problem at a higher level, I'm not sure how well that worked - they may well have been starved of investment - because Margaret Thatcher's government privatised the water boards. These private companies have been very good at paying dividends to their owners while amassing debts but have done a very poor job of disposing of sewage.
As with everything else, these companies have targets they have to meet. It turns out that one effective way of meeting those targets is to dispose a significant proportion of the untreated sewage into the rivers. This is being practised on a massive scale and was one of the reasons the previous government performed so catastrophically in the election last week - they were the party responsible for the current failing system.
One major sporting occasion every year is the University Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge. Normally the winning team jumps into the river to celebrate, this year they were warned not to do that - the E Coli values made that just too hazardous.
Re: We fundamentally altered the ecosystem. (Score:2)
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More than that, just from a layman's knowledge of evolution theory we should have known this was coming.
The bacterium that survives the antibiotic is the one that gets to continue reproducing, passing on the genetic trait that allowed it to survive. Enough cycles of that, and all you have left is bacteria DNA that resists the antibiotic. We came up with different antibiotics, and the bacteria is evolving to resist those too.
I guess apparently we were awesome enough to both define and ignore a theory of ev
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True, but bacteria have a very small genome and given time, they won't be able to add resistance to something new without it replacing resisting something that's old enough that it's not in the environment any more, or at least not enough for it to pay the bacteria to hang onto that resistance any longer. When that starts happening, we can start using some of the older drugs again because bacteria have "forgotten" ho
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I still envy you your machine shed, Fred.
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In this case you're missing an important part of the story: it's happening in UK rivers that have been polluted by dumping waste.
Evolution doesn't target us; it doesn't notice we're not getting sick and then go out and engineer a new bug. Evolution adapts the descendants of an organism to the environment in which they find themselves. It's the actions of humans, dumping waste containing both human pathogens and drugs into waterways that converts those waterways into evolutionary bioreactors.
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Yes, I know - evolution hates to be anthropomorphized
Nah, it's all good, a friend of mine went to school with her and she's fine with it. But you're right, she can be a pushy bitch at times.
Re: Let me guess (Score:2)
This is literally something that climate change can't do.
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Is there nothing climate change can't do?
Stop idiots from setting up straw men to attack so they can feel good about themselves?
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No, just standard "survival of the fittest" evolution. The thing that some dude in the 19th century figured out that apparently still eludes you.
Good (Score:1, Troll)
A society dumb enough to dump sewage into a river deserves everything they get. Or building a factory next to a river then wondering why the water is poison.
I have lost all hope for mankind. Hopefully Jesus got wise and decided to never come back. Fuck humans.
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Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
A society dumb enough to dump sewage into a river deserves everything they get.
Erm.. That's where all sewage ends up from every society ever. It's generally "treated" in first world countries first though...
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A society dumb enough to dump sewage into a river deserves everything they get.
Erm.. That's where all sewage ends up from every society ever. It's generally "treated" in first world countries first though...
Also, What do you think fish, marine life, amphibians, aquatic mammals etc. do?
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Also, What do you think fish, marine life, amphibians, aquatic mammals etc. do?
The same thing land animals do. If you were a paleolithic hunter gatherer you wouldn't mind living in the woods the animals shit in. That doesn't mean you wouldn't mind living in a barn that nobody every mucks out. That is the original version of "too much of a good thing".
The old saying in environmental engineering is "dilution is the solution to pollution". This is very true for animal waste products; if it's diluted across the animal's habitat it will recycled by bacteria into beneficial nutrients.
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I think some countries dump them in the sea (not at the shore, they got a pipe going deeper into the sea) after treatment.
At least I think Singapore does that. I assume at the least other small countries with sea access and with the capability are also doing that. Bigger countries / land locked countries may not be able to do that.
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That is why Mrs Thatcher explained patiently that "there is no such thing as society". It's a useful abstraction for the ways in which we ought to behave if we were intelligent enough to act in our own interests.
It's not "a society" that dumps sewage into a river; according to the article, it's 'multiple sources, including "domestic cesspits, farms and some industrial waste"'. In other words, a mixture of individuals and corporations unrestrained either by government or by morality. Of course, the sources o
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A society dumb enough to dump sewage into a river deserves everything they get.
And yet there seems to be no shortage of Indians, who ritually bathe in one of the most polluted rivers in the world, pollution that includes copious amounts of raw sewage. Filth doesn't kill Third Worlders because they haven't tried to separate themselves from it the way the First World has. The cleaner we lived, though, the more we lost our defenses against the kind of stuff that occurs naturally.
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Religion is only here to rape the willing. Jesus didn't build a church. Being a carpenter and a direct descendant of The Creator would make you think he would have built a couple.
Shit rolls down hill where the river flows. You really can't fix stupid, just kill it or watch it suicide out.
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The truth is a troll. You guys are so fucked in the head. Keep voting for cocksuckers that make you suffer. Stupid fucks.
With luck (Score:2, Troll)
Re:With luck you will get hit by a bus (Score:2)
Re: With luck you will get hit by a bus (Score:1)
There's a difference between scepticism and denialism.
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Given the unprecedented level of testing, the data collected, the exigent circumstances, and the available options, yes. It's denialism. Although I don't expect you'll have the mental capacity to grok why.
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Care to provide some peer reviewed data to support that?
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Really... you're thinking that the people who said "I'll take my chances and trust my immune system instead of outsourcing it to big pharma" are going to be the first to suffer when big pharma's drugs stop working?
Wisdom is chasing you, but you are faster!
Gross (Score:1)
And people wonder why the Tories lost (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet another triumph for privatizing public infrastructure, then allowing one's corporate buddies to profit off it and regulate themselves.
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The EPA is part of the United States government. Those of us fortunate enough to live in civilized countries don't deal with it.
Just out of curiosity, when you refer to "Big Brother", are you talking about that convicted felon your Republican Party is attempting to put in charge of your country, even though he has never won a popular vote, and never will?
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but (Score:2)
I live next to the River Deben... (Score:3)
On the other hand, we have always known that she was a party hack. Round here, we call her The Chocolate Teapot - (she is as useful as a
I am not looking forward to telling the village that we are living next to a sewer full of drug-resistant bacteria.
This was supposed to be the last undeveloped river in England.
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Those rural constituencies probably aren't going to be happy if Labour cracks down on agricultural runoff.
Nothing left but hope (Score:2)
no job is too big! (Score:2)
The Matrix was right (Score:2)
"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the sam
Maybe... (Score:2)
...the UK should stop pumping raw sewage into rivers and lakes over 1000 times per day, 400,000 times a year.
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