Not at all, except insofar as nature makes it so. Or, perhaps alternatively, you've misstated the problem.
The ultimate problem is not, "use of antibiotics has led to us not having good ways to treat bacterial infections". This is plainly seen by considering an alternate universe, in which we never had antibiotics - we'd *still* have no good ways to treat bacterial illness. If the same state would exist whether or not antibiotics exist, then clearly the antibiotics are not actually at the root of the problem.
The real problem is that bacteria are crafty buggers. Crafty enough that we have not yet developed a single static approach to treating them, and may never. Tt chnages teh view of it from "modern medicine is causing problems" to "modern medicine is responding to problems".
The real problem is not that bacteria are crafty buggers. They're not; they're not even evolved enough to have what would amount to instincts as we understand them. Scott DeWar partly pointed out the real problem: We misused antibiotics and created an extreme degree of pressure that forced bacteria to evolve. If we had better managed antibiotic usage, we would have probably saved ten times as many lives than they will currently saved. But instead, we wasted them like a group of frat boys going through beer. And now, we're facing the consequences.
And, here's the other problem: Even with medical science knowing this, we continue to waste antibiotics. Yes, people who take their medicines wrong helped cause the issue. But they were still not the entirety of the pressure point. We have doctors prescribing antibiotics for just about anything, antibiotic soaps being sold over-the-counter, antibiotic treatments being used in extreme quantities in hospitals, medical experts who give recommendations to rely heavily on antibiotics... In short, we have a problem on
nearly every single level of medicine related to antibiotics. And despite all of the warnings that this, to put it most politely, is bloody stupid those problems continue unabated.
So, no, I did not mis-state the problem. I am pointing out that medical science has flat-out proven, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it cannot be trusted in this field until it grows in how it handles this kind of technology. The evidence at this point is overwhelming, and even medical science has admitted they're at fault for helping cause the problem. So why are we looking into making
the same moronic mistake with viruses?
I see no point in pursuing this until we know we can be trusted to abuse it. Because we will. And anyone with a degree in medicine or a field that affects it who doesn't take this into consideration should apologize to humanity and give their degree back.
Some would suggest education of patients to solve this issue. Well, that's been done. A lot. It's like abstinence education, most cancer awareness campaigns, and fighting climate change by using a different fabric softener: A feel-good solution that does nothing to solve the problem.
Also, they're investigating nanotechnology and specially-engineered targeted viruses as alternatives to antibiotics. We might have already had one of those if antibiotics never existed; we don't lack capacity for playing with the genetics of viruses at this point. And viruses also can be a lot harder for bacteria to adapt to, plus we can adapt the viruses over time as the bacteria adapt. Nanotech will be in the same boat as viruses when it finally rolls out. So, no, we didn't lack options, just we would have had some medical developments come a bit later.
So long as we remember that "short term" is "generations". Penicillin was first developed in 1928, and it and its derivatives are still in use today.
The current subspecies of humanity has been around for at least two hundred thousand years that I know of, and I will admit I am very uneducated on evolution... so I accept it might even be longer than that. And human civilization has existed for probably around ten thousand years; I'm not going to bother to look that up. Even written history goes back thousands of years. There are currently real-world conflicts going on over problems created two or three thousand years ago. So, even by human terms, you're still talking about an incredibly short amount of time.
But bacterial infections did that *before* penicillin, too. Antibiotics did not create the situation. It is just that a single formulation does not resolve the situation for all time. Yeah, guess what, evolution happens, and we must constantly adapt.
Not to the degree they did after humanity started started abusing penicillin.
With respect - the *media* panicked. Governments panicked. some people in out population panicked. The medial experts? Not so much panic. Statements of concern, statements that we have to be *wise* in how we use certain drug. But "panic" is not a word I'd use to describe the reaction.
The media didn't panic. They got a sensationalist story they could spin to their heart's content. What you saw wasn't panic; it was a ratings feeding frenzy.
Governments panicked because they had their medical experts telling them that this is a very serious problem and is going to have a lot of problems. And, yes, the medical experts did panic; what you describe is their panic reaction. They typically don't combine statements of concern and statements we need to be wise in how we handle something unless it's something that is incredibly bad.
Nothing misleading at all. I said that, after you are born, the only way for a viral infection to directly impact the genetics of your children is if the infection strikes your testes or ovaries. Influenza? Doesn't do that. Rhinovirus? HIV? Don't do that. What happens in your upper respiratory system, for example, can't impact your kid's genetics.
It is important to note that, in fact, most viruses *don't* have the ability to impact our genetic material at all. Some viruses carry their own DNA that gets transcribed to RNA and then to proteins in our cells. Others have RNA that gets transcribed directly to proteins. A third type has RNA, which gets transcribed to DNA, which gets inserted into the host cell's genome, and *then* gets translated *back* into RNA and then to proteins. This last type is the sort that might regularly change human genetic material to get passed on .
So, for this to be relevant, we need a double whammy - we need a virus that implants code into the cell's genes (like a retrovirus does), and *also* infects the gonads. There are some, but there are many more that don't, and for the ones that do, their effect is only felt on evolutionary timescales. We are talking about a problem for 10,000 years from now or more.
I did a bit of reading on this. Still not enough to count for anything as a degree.
For one thing, some people are genetically immune to HIV. Why? Well, the paper I read suggested it's because of smallpox. They got a genetic trait related to that set of viruses and passed it on. And there's apparently a genetic resistance to Ebola floating around in some animals and people. There's also some other papers about the human genetic code having a much larger portion of it determined potentially coming from viruses than I thought. Interesting idea. So, yeah, apparently diseases that don't affect the testes can still affect your genetic code.
Best part is, you can google the papers. They're incredibly easy to find. Just look up "genetic immunity to HIV", "genetic immunity to ebola", and "human DNA affected by viruses" to get the papers.
Also, if you're going to dismiss something because it might not be an immediate problem, then you're going to dismiss a lot of really big problems. Climate change, for example, is currently not projected to have its major affects for around a thousand years. Deforestation, at current rates, will probably be completed in a couple thousand years. African will likely end up consumed by the Sahara Desert in thousands of years. We probably won't even truly run out of oil for a thousand years, even with current consumption levels (most estimates of world oil supply are the
easily accessed oil reserves). And these are just the most immediate problems outside of medical science.
Of course, we could just wait twenty years on this research. At the rate humanity is studying viruses, we'll have all of the answers we need by then to determine if this anti-viral medication is worth pursuing or just another problem humanity will be making for itself.
