something something superbug it's a conspiracy

[Naudian]

-> http://www.naturalnews.com/032622_ecoli_bioengineering.html

I haven't read it all yet.

When considering the genetic evidence that now confronts us, it is difficult to imagine how this could happen "in the wild." While resistance to a single antibiotic is common, the creation of a strain of e.coli that's resistant to eight different classes of antibiotics -- in combination -- simply defies the laws of genetic permutation and combination in the wild. Simply put, this superbug e.coli strain could not have been created in the wild. And that leaves only one explanation for where it really came from: the lab.

Dun Dun

Subtitles in the article include:

The genetic code reveals the history
Bioengineering a deadly superbug
Engineered and then released into the wild
First ban the natural medicine, then attack the food supply
Food as weapons of war - created by Big Pharma?
A new era has begun: Bioweapons in your food

I'll try to comment later, in the meantime, discuss!

 

[YROC]

Typical day on Earth.

 

[Shem]

Typical sign that the end is nigh.

I want you to beat that.

 

[Stigmata]

Hooray! I love the future.

 

[dfc05]

I didn't read the article, but naturally the words "colloidal silver" jumped out at me because I research environmental aspects of nanoproducts.

So I read that paragraph. And it is totally bizarre.

But in either case -- no matter what you believe -- the simple truth is that the world is now facing a new era of global superbug strains of bacteria that can't be treated with any known pharmaceutical. They can all, of course, be readily killed with colloidal silver, which is exactly why the FDA and world health regulators have viciously attacked colloidal silver companies all these years: They can't have the public getting its hands on natural antibiotics that really work, you see. That would defeat the whole purpose of making everybody sick in the first place.

First off -- huge WTF.

OK, here we go.....
Now technically colloidal silver is a larger particle size than nano, and the only health effect we've really seen from drinking it is that it can literally turn you into a Smurf, which is a detriment if you want to be a normal person who doesn't get stared at but maybe beneficial if you want to become an honorary member of the Blue Man Group? The reason why the FDA and world health regulators are interested in regulating colloidal & nano silver (as well as other nano products) is not some grand conspiracy, but because we don't fully understand whether there are negative consequences to use/abuse of those products.
Colloidal/nano silver on topical bandages -- maybe understandable. Colloidal silver drinks -- has never seemed medically/scientifically logical to me. It's as if this dude forgot that every single person naturally has E Coli living in their guts. So drinking a broad spectrum antibiotic like colloidal silver is unnecessary and potentially harmful. Not to mention, the accumulation of silver in your body and the Smurf effect.

Also, these products are regulated quite poorly at the moment and you can buy them off Ebay if you really want to make yourself turn blue. The only real regulation against this product is that you can't claim beneficial effects on the label, because none have actually been proven. If there's some FDA conspiracy against colloidal silver, they're certainly not doing a good job of it.

If the rest of the article is anything like that paragraph, I'd say the entire thing is crap, seeing as that one paragraph is about 100% bogus.
Also, the subtitles read a little like Neal Stephenson's novel Zodiac, which was a hilarious piece of fiction, but so scientifically wrong.

[edit] how do you remove the attached image/get it not to auto attach it? augh. sorry.

 

[ríomhaire]

Reminds me of the argument against evolution that the eye is too complicated to not have been designed.

 

[Dandan]

this article reminds me of this

 

[Eejit]

Can't find any link to a peer-reviewed article about the genetics of the bug. It could conceivably have gained though resistances through horizontal gene transfer - the way bacteria generally gain such genes.

It's a ridiculous and greatly biased article with a bunch of inaccuracies. For example if it was engineered there are literally thousands of university labs who could create such a strain, but the author has a grudge against Pharma and the CDC so the are named as the only possible culprits.

The story is a hysterical piece of trash full of speculation and wild surmise, from what looks like a fringe special interest group.


Edit: found a couple of links to work he was presumably referring to (though prior to it being published?), haven't had time to look through them just yet but I don't see anything jumping out at me about bioengineering...
http://www.rki.de/cln_151/nn_217400...,property=publicationFile.pdf/EHEC_Report.pdf
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(11)70165-7/fulltext
http://www.rki.de/cln_151/nn_217400...raw,property=publicationFile.pdf/EHECO104.pdf

 

[Naudian]

I'm inclined to agree with you, Eejit, about the article being trash.

It still seems pretty plausible that someone's business interest is involved in shit like this.

 

[Maestro]

How the hell is anyone taking an article from a source called "Natural News" seriously? No, really, **** me if I understand how anyone is even entertaining the idea that this guy is anything other than a hack trying to sell you shit. Watch he'll be telling us Airborne and Oscillicoccinum help, too. ****ing hell people like this drive me to frothing fury with their lies and agendizing.

Colloidal silver has been proven repeatedly to have extremely harmful impacts on anyone who takes it systemically for long periods, up to and including cirrhosis, kidney failure, and skin turning blue. I spent a long time buying into the survivalist community, and this is one of many snake oil items that 'preparedness specialists' sell as a solution to disease. Yeah, it works for stimulating skin growth and prevents bacterial infections. That doesn't make it a good idea to chug a glass of.

 

[Nabobalis]

Thing is, most antibiotic resistance genes are already in nature, they pre-date most, if not all of current antibiotics on the market. It is why resistance is easy to come by, coupled with the fact that certain bacteria are for a better word, whores i.e they are happy to exchange genetic information between them. (Source from Scientific American articles in the past 3 months)

 

[Eejit]

Indeed. Antibiotics are generally based on (or direct copies of) chemicals found in nature - often they are antibiotics produced by bacteria to kill off their competition. Obviously therefore there are existing resistances for the overwhelming majority of them, the microbial species that produces it is general resistance for one thing.
There are a few antibiotics which come from different source iirc (don't know which ones off the top of my head) for which it is much rarer to find resistance in the wild, but unless a bunch of them are used solely in combination the bacteria will always evolve and share resistance without much trouble.