Thursday, May 31, 2007
Extreme-drug resistant TB
A man with extreme-drug resistant TB travels twice across the globe, between European and North American continents, possibly exposing others in the confines of an airplane to this deadly form of mycobacterial lung infection. An infectious disease expert in India says one-third of the blood samples of TB patients he has examined there are of the extreme drug-resistant variety which carries a 40% mortality rate. Politicians respond by saying new vaccines and antibiotics are in the making and more money is being directed toward research. These efforts are too late and would only be marginally effective. The plea to eradicate TB is futile. The more man-made antibiotics that are employed, the more drug-resistant strains of this mycobacterial infection arise. Humanity is in a box canyon. Its hallowed "magic bullet" antibiotics increasingly useless against this and other infections. The drug and vaccine approaches to treat TB dominate, rather than efforts to improve natural immunity (vitamin D, vitamin C, selenium, fish oil) and natural antibiotics that do not induce drug-resistance (allicin from garlic, oleuropein from oil of oregano). The public should be forewarned, this is just the beginning. A third of the world has lung TB, some of these people have undiagnosed drug-resistant TB, and obviously some travel on airplanes, to spread the disease across the globe. A pandemic is brewing and it will llikely arise out of hospitals, where TB is treated with antibiotics, and spread from there. The most likely contact with a person who had TB will be foreign immigrants. Barbers, hotel and restaurant workers, gardeners, children of immigrants will carry the disease into our schools, workplaces and homes. If you are treated with antibiotics, as you must be, you are at risk to develop drug-resistance. The world is in a fix. It's only a matter of time now....tick, tick, tick, tick.. -Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc. San Dimas, California
posted by Knowledge of Health at 8:51 AM
