What is Digg?Sponsored by HowLifeWorks
How Much Are You Over-Paying For Your Auto Insurance view!
howlifeworks.com - Car insurance rates have dropped leaving many people paying far more than they need to...
40 Comments
- DestroyedAUS, on 09/13/2009, -2/+25Come to Australia, and we'll show you fear of beaches... Blue ringed octopus, box jellyfish, Irukandji, Great whites... Then you can run to shore and be killed by the assortment of spiders, snakes and real friendly kangaroos roaming about.. :D
- doublefelix, on 09/13/2009, -0/+15I think it's the MRSA, or antibiotic resistant variant of Staph that have got people a bit concerned in these cases.
- xenuxenuts, on 09/13/2009, -1/+12They're not talking about normal staph:
"The germ is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — a hard-to-treat bug once rarely seen outside of hospitals but that increasingly is spreading in ordinary community settings such as schools, locker rooms and gyms." - spriggig, on 09/13/2009, -2/+12The Digg knee jerk reaction to these stories is dismissive sarcasm. And, while we do have to learn to dismiss the media hype, there is still an important warning here:
"The strains resembled the highly resistant ones usually seen in hospitals, rather than the milder strains acquired in community settings."
I think the emergence of these "super-bugs" could be related to our over use of anti-bacterial soap. The anti-bacterial agents are not magically destroyed when they go down the drain, they enter our environments and force the evolution of resistant bugs. - dhughes, on 09/13/2009, -1/+6 This reminds me of an excellent program on the CBC a few months back about people with mysterious illnesses in BC, they had very rare fungal lung infections, the fungus was only found in SE Asia.
It ended up being the fungus they thought it was but it was growing on BC trees, it wasn't from Asia, the climate (south western BC has always been pretty warm by Canadian standards!) had creeped up a degree or two, just enough to allow this fungus to live year round, it didn't get cold enough to kill it. - sarahlee, on 09/13/2009, -0/+5I take it you don't work for the tourism council.
- rexuslexus, on 09/13/2009, -0/+5Did you know that you're crazily misinformed about MRSA? Take it from someone who has had to see it first hand. And the person involved wasn't one living in the conditions you describe either... She is an accountant who takes herr cleanliness seriously and lives in immaculate conditions... Yet she needed two surgeries to recover from her MRSA infection...
So please don't generalize your comments, it's quite ignorant. - ApokalypseNow, on 09/14/2009, -0/+4As someone who had MRSA, I can't stress enough how ***** painful that ***** is. The initial infection got into my blood and kept giving me painful, scar-causing boils about once a month for the next year. Imagine a spiky tennis ball, under your skin - that's about what it felt like. Some of them were at least in accessible areas so I could lance them and drain them myself, but others, like the last and most painful one I got on my back, left me in two weeks of near-constant agony.
One trick I learned towards the end of my ordeal that I wish I'd learned much earlier was the use of epsom salt pastes (magnesium sulfate) to dehydrate the boils, which caused them to come to a head quicker, making them easier to pop and drain. - Mnementh2230, on 09/14/2009, -0/+4If, however, the antibiotics in the soap and those used in hospitals work via similar mechanisms, the reasoning stands. It comes down to the differences between the antibiotics, of which I am admittedly ignorant.
- ApokalypseNow, on 09/14/2009, -0/+4Getting hit with antibacterial soap would not cause the bacteria to develop a resistance to hospital antibiotics like penicillin - that's like saying that being exposed to rattlesnake venom will cause you to develop a resistance to bleach, it doesn't work.
- Mnementh2230, on 09/14/2009, -0/+3And lets not forget the crocodiles... and scorpions... and tremendously huge birds that can take down kangaroos...
- ApokalypseNow, on 09/14/2009, -0/+3@Mnementh2230
Most anti-bacterial soaps just have alcohol, triclosan, Triclocarban/Trichlorocarbamide, and PCMX/Chloroxylenol in them as their antibacterial agents. These don't work the same way as prescription antibiotics. - Mnementh2230, on 09/14/2009, -0/+3drnimr0d - not much, really. You introduce a trace of it into the environment, and it kills those bacteria that have no ability to survive. Those that have some ability to survive then reproduce and the entire population in that area then has AT LEAST a small ability to survive. Say they get hit with a larger dose - what then? Same thing - most may die, but some survives, and reproduces. The entire population there can then survive that level. This isn't rocket science.
- StaticThunder, on 09/14/2009, -0/+3If you have one, used in the vicinity of the other (like antibiotics and antibacterial soaps in hospitals), the bacteria prevalent in those places will tend to package the elements onto plasmids so as to communicate them both at the same time to other non-resistant bacteria - who will need both to live there - plasmids that didn't package both would be outcompeted. This happens with antibiotics and heavy metal resistances as well. The presence of mercury from dental fillings in at least one experiment I am aware of encouraged the bacteria to maintain resistance elements for antibiotics that were associated on the same region of DNA, long after the antibiotics were no longer present and the elements should have been diluted out.
Also, efflux pumps can have broad substrate ranges, as can elements that encode less permeable or differently constructed cell walls, so one element can confer broad resistance ranges, even to diverse compounds. Usually not the most efficient way to acquire it though. - inactive, on 09/13/2009, -0/+3sometimes wind blows it into your cheetos and you have no choice :-(
- dustincase, on 09/13/2009, -0/+2So... As long as I pick my nose and eat it, I can slowly build a resistance to the infections by introducing small amounts of it to my body over time?
- libkarl2, on 09/14/2009, -0/+1Dugg for unrestrained PANIC!
- VaderCatLover, on 09/14/2009, -1/+2Another reason to pass health care reform now!
SINGLE PAYER OPTION NOW, *****! - absolutelytrue, on 09/14/2009, -0/+1You, fingerrockets4, don't know what you're talking about.
- inactive, on 09/13/2009, -1/+2Anybody else getting the trident add over the first paragraph that WILL NOT GO AWAY?
- DreadPirate, on 09/15/2009, -0/+1Why? Because single payer health care will somehow fix the beaches? One has nothing to do with the other, moron.
- libkarl2, on 09/14/2009, -0/+1{copypasta: http://www.foogle.biz/mrsa.htm}
"MRSA, or Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, is a the name of a group of bacteria that produce a type of infection, usually caused by the common bacteria Staphylococcus Aureus. Staphylococcus Aureus, often referred to simply as Staph, are bacteria commonly carried on the skin or in the nose of healthy people, and humankind have been living with this bug for many generations without too many problems."
I also used to think that you had to be a "nasty pig" to catch staph infections, but it's just not the case. It's more useful (and accurate) to think of the situation as a kind of microbiological Russian roulette... in which nobody is exempt! - bentrinh, on 09/14/2009, -0/+1Biology 1P?
- Tomholius, on 09/14/2009, -0/+1Its on mine too! Impossible to close and directly infront of the article.
- TheGuruStud, on 09/14/2009, -0/+1What is this "ad" you speak of?
- SpeedyThing, on 09/13/2009, -3/+3What are the chances of infection?
If infected what are the chances of developing dangerous symptoms?
If you develop the symptoms what are the chances you'll be fine?
Without these statistics this article is next-to-worthless and is doing nothing more than fear-mongering. - canvashinder, on 09/13/2009, -1/+1You would have thought that Don't Eat the Sand would have been mentioned at least once.
- pwarnock, on 09/13/2009, -6/+6What a crappy article. Staph has been at the beaches ever since civilization starting dumping sewage into the water. Surfers get it all the time and have to take antibiotics to get rid of it.
- fingerrockets4, on 09/13/2009, -1/+1Exactly!
- Pinkertinkle, on 09/13/2009, -2/+1Staph is everywhere already.
- shiftkgb, on 09/14/2009, -2/+1On behalf of the world I would like to thank the criminal population of Australia for keeping that scary ass ***** down there.
- undervalued, on 09/14/2009, -2/+1Bury EVERYTHING!
- catcher6250, on 09/13/2009, -3/+1I found one over here by this rock!
- waydee, on 09/13/2009, -5/+2You'll find MRSA in most peoples noses, it's not uncommon outside of hospitals in the slightest.
- fingerrockets4, on 09/13/2009, -3/+0that is very unfortunate but i stand by what i said.
there are always exceptions to every thing but by and large the facts show that the "majority" of people who contract MRSA either have weaken immune systems or don't wash very well.
i have also seen some one perfectly healthy lose their leg to a bacterial infection. some times you can scrape your knee in the wrong place at the wrong time and catch MRSA or something similar.
It's rare but as they say "***** happens"
- xero69, on 09/13/2009, -6/+3OMG there are GERMS out there, everybody panic (as soon as you're done washing your hands)
- Wilddigi, on 09/13/2009, -5/+2Stay at home and lock the doors
- TetchyTony, on 09/13/2009, -6/+2Worried for a minute - but then I saw they meant west coast of the so-called 'USA' only. Not that that excludes problems west of anywhere else, but there's probably more of us, statistically.
- TheGuruStud, on 09/13/2009, -6/+1I ain't afraid of no ghos...staph.
- fingerrockets4, on 09/13/2009, -8/+0did you know the keyboard that you are using right now probably has a number of life threatening germs on it?
In fact it's very likely your bathroom is cleaner then your keyboard or cell phone.
Thankfully we have great immune system.
The majority of people who contract MRSA are those who live in filth and don't wash themselves on a regular basses, or people with a significantly weakened immune system.
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is