new method to fighting bacteria

[piet11111]

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13924-manmade-defensin-rips-resistant-bacteria-apart.html


In a standard measure of the risk of bacteria evolving resistance to a new treatment, the defensin outstripped conventional antibiotics.
In the test, a sample of bacteria was given enough compound to kill 90% of the culture, with the survivors used to found a new one. The process was repeated, which drives the bacteria to evolve resistance.
"For conventional antibiotics, you generally find it takes 100 times more of the antibiotic to kill the bacteria after 9 repeats," says Nick Landekic (http://www.polymedix.com/management.php), Polymedix's chief executive. "We've done 14 repeats with PMX-30063 and there is no change in its potency."


what we see here is a new type of anti-biotic that bacteria can not defend against (yet)
this is good news for humanity as drug resistant forms of normally treatable diseases are becoming more common around the world.

[sonicbluetm]

Phew. And here I thought we'd be wiped out by a resurgence of TB.
GO CAPITALISM! :rolleyes:

[piet11111]

Phew. And here I thought we'd be wiped out by a resurgence of TB.
GO CAPITALISM! :rolleyes:

so you are saying that communists should oppose technological or medical advances just because we still live under capitalism ?

[ckaihatsu]

so you are saying that communists should oppose technological or medical advances just because we still live under capitalism ?


Sonicblue is just being ironic.... But, on a tangent, this does get to the heart of many arguments that we anti-capitalists get into on a routine basis....

I will readily concede that we are obviously not living in a communist world because the working class has not been able to pull off a successful revolution -- yet. The whole world is living in the shadow of the crushed Russian Revolution of 1917, thanks to the capitalists. Now, for almost a century, we have had no way forward, to full globalization, *and* we've suffered from world wars and ongoing warfare, thanks to the capitalists.

So how can we demonstrate that we're pro-science, or pro-progress in any way, if we don't have a communist world to call our own? Of course, being humanists by default should be enough, but I think it's best to argue that technological and medical advances are only made *despite* the retarding of progress due to capitalism.

What *would* people be able to do if they didn't have to wait for the business types to wrangle over if a profit could be made before okaying the financing for a research institute? What if science had the funds that today go to the military machine?

Since we are (unfortunately) living under capitalism we have to take what we can get, in terms of incremental scientific advances, but only knowing at the same time that perhaps we could have prevented *any* deaths from infectious diseases if we hadn't been so beholden to the profit-motive way of doing things for so long....


Chris


--


--
___

RevLeft.com -- Home of the Revolutionary Left
www.revleft.com/vb/member.php?u=16162

Photoillustrations, Political Diagrams by Chris Kaihatsu
community.webshots.com/user/ckaihatsu/

3D Design Communications - Let Your Design Do Your Footwork
ckaihatsu.elance.com

MySpace:
myspace.com/ckaihatsu

CouchSurfing:
tinyurl.com/yoh74u