Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
cent of U.S.-made antibiotics are fed to animals), but it is also contributing to the end of “the
Age of Wonder Drugs.” Since bacteria reproduce at 500,000 times the rate of humans, natural
genetic selection has made antibiotic-fed farm animals (and our own bodies after we ingest the
antibiotics contained within the flesh of these farm animals) into perfect breeding grounds for
growing super-microbes that are resistant to modern medicines.
When Jim Hensen, the beloved inventor of
The Muppets
, succumbed to a pneumonia-like
infection from an antibiotic-resistant form of strep (group A beta-hemolytic streptococci), the
best doctors and antibiotics that money could buy were unable to save his life. In the fall of
2008, Miss Brazil (Mariana Bridi da Costa), who took seventh place in the 2008 Miss World
Pageant, was on the top of her world. Raised in abject poverty, she was well on her way to su-
permodel stardom, and it seemed as if her future was bright and limitless. In late December, she
was hospitalized and treated for a urinary infection.
On January 3, 2009, she was transferred to Dorio Silva Hospital in “septic shock,” a serious
medical condition caused by infection-induced inflammation. The culprit was the bacteria
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
. This variety of bacteria has shown a tendency to rapidly develop
drug resistance to new antibiotics, and even though it is now responsible for roughly 10 percent
of all hospital-induced infections, there is little known about what causes this disease. In spite
of receiving treatment with the most advanced antibiotics, Mariana Bridi's disease spread
throughout her body. The spreading infection resulted in necrosis, which is the deadening of
tissues caused by septicemia with its resulting lack of blood flow to organs and tissues. In an
attempt to save her life, they amputated her hands and feet, then placed her on a respirator, but
she died anyway.
As the above-mentioned cases portray, the specter of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is truly
frightening, but the good news is that there are many alternative medicines, herbs, and treat-
ments that can be quite effective in the fight against a wide variety of viruses and antibiotic-res-
istant bacteria, to which mainstream high-tech Western medicine has little or nothing to offer.
The bad news is that 99 percent of the doctors in our hospitals are not trained in these alternat-
ives, and don't have a clue about what to do when their pharmaceutical high-tech medicines
fail to heal. If you wait until a pandemic starts, you will have at best just a slim chance for loc-
ating an available health practitioner familiar with alternative herbs, medicines, and methods.
In the words of Robert Saum, PhD, the typical attitude among most of his medical colleagues
in this country is, “If I didn't learn it in medical school, it can't be true.”
