Evolution: Superbugs

Superbugs a growing threat to hospital patients

CTV.ca News Staff Updated: Wed. Sep. 13 2006 11:32 PM ET

Superbugs are a growing threat in Canadian hospitals, and better medication and infection controls are needed, a new study suggests.

The number of one powerful bacteria strain's resistance to antibiotics has jumped dramatically: From five-to-15 per cent to 20-to-50 per cent. That's a significant increase from previous estimates, according to the report by the Canadian National Intensive Care Unit.

Researchers examined 4,180 specimens from patients in 19 intensive care units across Canada. The resistance figures pertain to the most common virulent strain of bacteria, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which is a major cause of hospital-acquired wound and skin infections. Scientists also found an increase in the resistance of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) and E. coli, with levels at 6.8 per cent and 4.7 per cent, respectively.
"The stark reality in this country today is the MRSA and other drug-resistant bacteria are posing a serious threat to our ICUs," primary investigator Dr. George Zhanel, a professor at the University of Manitoba, said in a news release. "People infected with these superbugs are more likely to have longer hospital stays and require multiple drug treatments to fight them off.
And even then, it's often too little, too late.” About 8,500 Canadians die each year from complications arising from infections acquired in hospitals, according to the Community and Hospital Infection Control Association. Zhanel says stronger infection control measures are needed to limit the impact of the superbugs. Strict compliance from patients for less complicated infections is also vital, he said.

Another disturbing trend found by researchers is the increase of MRSA acquired in the community, not in the hospital setting. The strains were found among athletes, soldiers and intravenous drug users, the study showed. At least seven cases of the community-acquired strains, usually found in drug users and First Nations communities, are currently being treated across the country, the report said. "In Canada, sporadic cases (of the strains) have started to appear over the last decade," said Dr. Tony Mazzulli, a University of Toronto professor and medical microbiologist and infectious diseases specialist. "They tend to involve different strains and different antibiotic resistance profiles than hospital-acquired infections."

© Copyright 2006 CTV Inc.

Intelligent Design -- Liberal Style

I've finally figured it out...

... The Liberals actually believe in Intelligent Design while Conservatives believe in evolution. Sounds backwards, right? But hear me out:

A key characteristic of Conservative thought is that there should be minimal interference from government, allowing individuals to seek their own potential, with the opportunity to both excel and fail. This is exactly the way natural selection, or evolution if your prefer, works.

On the other hand, Liberals feel that the economic system needs to be managed and controlled. In their opinion, a purely market-driven, free-choice economy will fail to invest in the "right" things, therefore the government has a responsibility to substitute its will upon the public. In other words, Liberals don't really believe in allowing natural selection to take place without outside influence. They believe in Intelligent Design alright, and furthermore believe they play the role of the Designer.

I entered into this line of thinking while shaking my head at our Governor's announcement that starting with the high school Class of 2011, students in Ohio would have to show proficiency in Algebra 2, Chemistry and Physics in addition to all the current standards.

The public education system in this country is one of the greatest examples of liberal thinking -- the government knows what's best for everyone. The government mandates the existence of public schools, requires taxes to be paid to support them, and sets standards for student proficiency.

Meanwhile our economy is a train wreck in progress. The Governor's pronouncement is a bad idea because it will take resources away from the brightest students and redirect it to students who have neither the aptitude or desire to learn about math, chemistry, and physics.

He cites the increasing global competition for labor, and says that by having better trained high school graduates in Ohio, our state will be able to compete for new jobs more successfully. He forgets that the problem isn't that our workers are undereducated compared to other countries. In fact, the probability is that the skills of our workers versus those in other regions of the US and other countries compare favorably. The issue is that our cost of labor is much higher than the rest of the world. That is the legacy of 100 years of unions and government expansion, not a problem with how much education our residents acquire in high school. If you are going to add any subject matter to the high school curriculum, how about Economics?

The governor's plan will be expensive. It will cause either an incremental funding load to pay for the additional teachers required to teach everyone these subjects, or it will take away resources from "optional" programs in the school systems (e.g. programs for gifted students). He may be a Republican, but he's thinking like a Democrat in this case. I'm glad he's out of office this year.

If we want to fix our schools, we need to allow the kids and parents to have a choice where they go to school. I'm okay with a national policy which says every kid should have a chance to go to school, and would support vouchers as a way to make sure every kid has the money to do so. Schools that deliver the results the customer wants (ie - the parents & students) will attract kids and money, and those who fail to deliver will starve and die. Kids who have aptitude and desire will seek out the schools that will actually give them an education in their chosen field. The rest can be trained in a trade, or join the military, or be free to starve to death. America is the land of opportunity, not the land of guarantees.

Liberals: you support evolution -- this is how it works. Quit playing Intelligent Designer.

God vs Evolution

I don’t really see this as an either/or proposition.

The no-God people say evolution and natural processes explain everything about how our universe is today. Okay, then let’s imagine running the timeline of our universe backwards and see what happens:

• The current age of mammals (and insects) starts when an asteroid hits the earth and wipes out the bulk of the large lizard population. Before that...
• Dinosaurs are the result of a continuous cycle of mutation and evolution which begins with the first living and reproducing cells emerging in the primordial sea. Before that...
• The earth coalesces from matter circling our young star, the Sun. While there were still big pieces of stuff flying around the solar system, perhaps one of them hit the soft earth and tossed off a chunk that became our Moon. Or maybe the Moon coalesced independently. Other planets formed. Too bad for Mercury and Venus – they’re too close and too hot and it doesn’t look like any life emerged (I’m still holding out hope for Venus as the sun cools). The gas giants weren’t quite big enough to fuse into stars, and not warm enough to support anything we understand as life. Mars may have had its “time in the sun” (sorry) as the sun was cooling, but when its core temperature dropped and the magnetic field was lost, the atmosphere was swept away, all the water froze, and whatever life was there died. Or maybe they migrated to next warmer planet, Earth. Before that...
• The Big Bang occurs, and matter is sprayed from a single mother particle into the void, creating our universe and everything in it. Before that?

There are still a few unanswered questions, don’t you think?

• What caused the Big Bang to occur?
• Has it only happened once, or has our universe exploded, contracted, and exploded again many times?
• Are there other mother particles out there? Do they all explode at the same time, or are explosions and implosions going on all the time?
• Is there a higher realm of existence where entities ‘live’ which can control these Big Bangs?
• When we smash atoms in a linear accelerator (or a nuclear bomb), are we causing big bangs for the entities which live in a universe where quarks are planets and neutrinos are suns?

I don’t pretend to have answers to any of those questions, nor do I believe does anyone else. So I’m willing to leave room for the existence of beings of another realm that have a direct impact on our world. Not in minute detail (“your every hair has a number”), but close enough to step in with a broad brush as they desire.

Imagine a universe with only two dimensions and whose inhabitants were simple geometric shapes. Circles and squares and triangles wander around interacting with each other, completely unaware that their 2D universe coexists with universes of different numbers of dimensions. One day, a 3D universe intersects their 2D universe, and a sphere passes through right in front of a square and a star. What would they see? Perhaps first a point would appear which then turned into an expanding circle. Just as quickly, the circle contracted back to a point then disappeared. They would never say “hey, I bet that was a sphere” because they have no way of imagining a 3D object. They would probably say, "wasn't that a strangle circle?"

But maybe this wasn’t the first time a 3D object had passed through their 2D universe. Maybe it happened a few times before and a few of the more mystical 2D creatures began to suspect that the sphere wasn’t just a funny circle, but maybe something ‘supernatural.’ Over time, all kinds of mythology might develop as to the composition and purpose of the ethereal visitors.

And maybe the 3D creatures figured out how to communicate with the 2D creatures when the intersection occurred. The first communications would be simple. As the 3D’ers learned how to cause physical events in the 2D world, they might try to help them, or maybe exploit them. Later, as the 3D creatures got better at communications, they would learn to be more helpful (or manipulative). The physical interactions could get more sophisticated, even to the point to a sustained presence in the 2D world, appearing as a 2D creature.

So I’m not sure what God is. Neither is anyone else. But one working model for me is that God is an entity (or class of entities) of a universe which has dominion over ours. He knows how to interact with our universe. In the early days of Man, the interactions were crude. We were simple, and maybe God was just learning how to work the levers on his space/time machine. So we got lots of rules and extreme punishment. The interactions were like a parent talking to a toddler.

But then at least once, He made a projection into our space/time to interact with us in a more peer-to-peer manner, just like our sphere visiting the 2D universe. The advice we got then was more sophisticated, like a wise old sage talking to a young adult.

Personally, I think it was great advice.

Evolution

Originally published February 6, 2005

Evolution vs Creation; Evolution vs Intelligent Design; Creation vs Intelligent Design…

At least part of the problem seems to be that the word evolution is so loaded with emotion and confusion that there is no space to bring a religious component into the picture. So here’s an attempt to define evolution in a way that which perhaps creates some room for God.

My definition of evolution is that it is the collection of changes which happen to living organisms in an ecosystem in response to changes in the ecosystem and mutations of the organisms.

It’s the mutation category which most people think of when evolution is the topic. As a result of some damage to the DNA passed from the progenitors to the offspring, the offspring has a combination of traits which gives it a distinct advantage or disadvantage over its relatives. If the mutation is disadvantageous, the offspring is itself unlikely to reproduce and the effect of the mutation is lost. Otherwise the mutation is retained in that individual’s DNA, and may be passed on to its offspring (or perhaps emerge generations later). If the new traits give the individual a competitive advantage, it may provide for higher survival rates of it and its offspring (and broader access to reproductive partners), and gradually a population of individuals sharing this advantageous trait emerge. In successive generations, the DNA pool contains more and more mutations, and in aggregate they improve the reproductive and survival success of that line of individuals. Eventually the changes from the original species become so great that a different species emerges. This is the process which causes green slime to eventually become H. sapiens. It takes thousands or millions of generations for this to happen. That’s a long time for humans, but not quite so long for bacteria (only minutes elapse between generations). Nonetheless, it happens pretty slowly, and few of us get the opportunity to observe its results.

In business, you sometimes hear people say that evolutionary change isn’t fast enough, something revolutionary needs to happen. Those folks are thinking of evolution in terms of cumulative mutations. They miss the far faster and more dramatic form of evolution: the catastrophic change of environment. We know about the dinosaurs being wiped out by a dramatic change in the planet’s climate, perhaps caused by an asteroid strike. But not every reptile was eradicated, and not every mammal appeared after this event. When the climate changed, populations of species which could survive in the new environment carried on, and the rest died. Species which had the best bodies and brains for the old environment might just barely hang on in the new environment, and species that were marginal in the old environment might find that the sudden disappearance of their prime predators and competitors created a Garden of Eden for them. In one fell swoop, the planet went from domination by cold blooded lizards to warm blooded mammals. Of course, the change wasn’t really this binary. There are lots of organisms on Earth besides mammals and lizards. Some plants died out, and others filled their niche. Insects and bacteria and millions of other species survived, although the relative population sizes may have changed.

This kind of evolution is violent and sudden. Winners become losers and visa versa. The total population of individual organisms plummets, and the populations of those organisms better suited for the new environment begin taking over. This kind of evolution happens right before us. In fact, humanity causes a great number of the environmental catastrophes which drive these evolutionary changes. Here’s some examples:

When farmers spray their fields with insecticides, they kill large numbers of the target ‘pests,’ but not quite all. They also kill many of the predators who would otherwise kill those pests, as well as many other insects, some of whom may have been beneficial to the crops. Many of the population of target pests who survived the spraying did so because they were lucky enough to have a genetic makeup that made them resistant to the insecticide. The accumulation of mutations they had perhaps were never apparent or even useful before the farmer took his sprayer through the field, but on that day it was the key to their survival. If both male and female populations survived (because the necessarily mutations were expressed in both genders) they would happily go about procreating new generations of their species, many of whom would carry the mutation. Eventually, the population of this pest would approach that which it would have been had the pesticide not been sprayed at all. The reaction of the farmer is change pesticides. Same thing happens, except now the pest species has become resistant to both pesticides.

We do the same kind of thing when we take antibiotics, which are just pesticides for bacteria. Our body is a greenhouse for bacteria, most of which are harmless. And many of the bacteria which cause sickness can be defeated by a healthy immune system. But when we get sick, we want to feel better – right now. So we go the doctor and beg for antibiotics. The antibiotics are like a meteor strike to the population of bacteria in our body. Some species are wiped out altogether, some are weeded down to their lucky resistant members, and resistant specie now have the whole body to infect without any competition. If we’re lucky, the bad bacteria were part of the first group, and the bacteria who repopulate our body are the harmless kind.

But chances are, there were some bad guys who were resistant to the antibiotic. Perhaps we beat them down enough that they no longer cause a harmful infection, but the species did survive, and these particular members are resistant to this particular antibiotic. Our immune system may have them under control temporarily, but if we take ill for another reason, this population of bad guys can explode, and we might infect someone else. Now the resistant population is loose, and the antibiotic is no longer effective. With luck, the medical community has another antibiotic which beats down the population of bad guys. But eventually we get back to the same place. It’s just like the farmers with their insect pests.

Some agricultural experts have been saying that its time to just let pests and predators reach a natural balance. Sure some crops will be lost to the pests, but the theory is that the money saved in pesticides and application costs (e.g. fuel for the tractors) more than offset the loss of yield. But this isn’t just about saving money in one particular year. If we keep using more and more radical pest population control measures, the pest populations will just keep getting resistant to more things, until we have nothing acceptable left to kill them. Sure we can find yet one more way to kill the pests, but perhaps it creates genetic damage to the crops which results in undesirable effects on the animals that consume it. Maybe the next wave of a “mad cow” like disease will flow from cattle eating genetically damaged corn.

The “miracle drug” antibiotics of 50 years ago are all but worthless in western countries today. The species of bacteria they were developed to kill have become resistant, and now third and fourth generation antibiotics must be used. Where do you think the most resistant bacteria live? It’s not in cesspools and nasty ponds – it’s in major hospitals. Those rooms and their contents are constantly cleaned with antibacterial solutions to keep down infection. But you can’t kill all the bacteria all the time because some lucky few will have a mutated resistance. The bacteria which live in hospitals have survived the best we have to throw at them. If your body gets infected by one, there may be no antibiotic left which can beat it. If your immune system loses the battle, you die.

Yep, evolution is definitely going on all around us. H. Sapiens is enjoying what may well be the latter half of its time of domination. The catastrophe that changes the balance may well be of our own making.

When Jesus said, “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth (Mt 5:5),” he may have been talking about the bacteria and cockroaches.