News & Articles

Can antibiotic medicines, long hailed as miracle drugs, be too much of a good thing? Yes.
Two factors are at work here. First, bacteria (one of the earliest forms of life on Earth) are miracles in their own right, with a stunning ability to outsmart the antibiotic drugs through rapid evolution. Second is the rather dull inclination of us supposedly-superior humans to overuse and misuse antibiotic medicines. Every time we take an antibiotic to kill some bad bacteria that is infecting our bodies, a few of the infectious germs are naturally resistant to the drug, so they survive, multiply, and become a colony of Superbugs that antibiotics can’t touch.
Multiply this colony by the jillions of doses prescribed for everything from deadly staph infections to the common cold, and we get the “antibiotic paradox:” The more we use them, the less effective they become, for they’re creating a spreading epidemic of immune Superbugs.
A big cause of this is the push by drug companies to get patients and doctors to reach for antibiotics as a cure all. For example, millions of doses a year are prescribed for children and adults who have common colds, flu, sore throats, etc. Nearly all these infections are caused by viruses – which cannot (repeat: CANNOT) be cured with antibiotics. Taking an antibiotic for a cold is as useless as taking a heart drug for heartburn. The antibiotics will do nothing for your cold, but it will help establish drug-resistant Superbugs in your body. That’s not a smart trade off.
In fact, it’s incomprehensibly stupid. Antibiotics are invaluable medicines we need for serious, life-threatening illnesses, but squandering them on sore throats has already brought us to the brink of Superbugs that are resistant to everything. That’s the nightmare of all nightmares.
“The Rising Threat Of Antibiotic Resistance In The United States,” www.alternet.org, December 20, 2013.

Act 2 of the Ford & Radel Show

Perhaps you thought the political world was finally safe from the dynamic duo of Ford & Radel. But no – heeeere they come, rushing back into the limelight!
Rob Ford, the explosive Mayor of Toronto, became a global punch line last fall when a video showed hizzoner smoking crack cocaine. Then came little blowups involving sexual harassment, a murder threat, knocking down a city councilwoman, and drunken rages. Yet, on January 2nd, Rob was back, filing for re-election and blurting out that, “My record speaks for itself.”
Well, he’s right about that!
Even less charming is Trey Radel, a first-term congress critter from Fort Myers, Florida. His chief accomplishment in Washington was getting arrested last October for trying to buy cocaine from an undercover cop. But rather than humbly stepping down, or even quieting down, Trey called a December press conference to announce that he’s healed. Having completed a 28-day treatment program for addiction (though apparently not for narcissism), the former TV anchorman declared himself fit “to return to what I do, what you sent me to do in Washington.”
Presumably, that does not include scuttling around back alleys seeking drugs and drink. Radel said that, thanks to God and family, he’s a changed man. For one thing, while he still insists that poor families should be subjected to drug tests in order to get food stamps, he has slightly amended that Dickensian stance: “I think members of Congress should be tested as well,” he said with a straight face.
So Radel wants poor people’s food stamps automatically taken away if they’re caught using drugs. But, a lawmaker who gets nabbed can keep drawing his $170,000-a-year government salary. Still, that doesn’t make Radel a hypocrite, because, as Stephen Colbert points out, lawmakers don’t get food stamps.
“Toronto mayor files for re-election,” Austin American Statesman, January 3, 2014.
“A Year in Mayors’ Gaffes,” Time, December 23, 2013.
“Defying GOP Leaders, Rep. Trey Radel Won’t Resign After Rehab,” www.npr.org, January 2, 2014.
“Trey Radel interview: After cocaine arrest, congress aims for ‘successful year,’” www.news-press.com, December 19, 2013.

A whiff of cheese on Wisconsin streets

For generations, picture-takers have instructed their subjects to “say ‘cheese.’”
Well, no people “say cheese” better than Wisconsinites, who unabashedly wear Cheesehead hats in public, celebrate dozens of cheese festivals, have a Monterey Jack bacterium as the states’ official microbe, and generally honor the milk curd as a deity. So, naturally, Wisconsin would be the state to come up with the idea of spraying its city streets with cheese brine.
This is not some sort of cheesy tourist promotion, but an actual attempt to have two problems blend into one clever solution. Problem number one is ice. Wisconsin gets lots of it, with Milwaukee alone averaging more than four feet of snow each winter and spending some $10 million a year to apply rock salt to clear its frozen streets. Not only is that a lot of money, but about 30 percent of the dry salt bounces off the roadways and pollutes waterways.
Problem number two is cheese brine. It’s a waste product from cheese making, and this state produces nearly 3 billion pounds of cheese a year, so it has lots of brine. It costs a typical dairy farmer thousands of dollars each year to dispose of it. But this winter, farmers are donating their waste problem to cities like Milwaukee, which are hauling the brine to their road maintenance facilities and blending it into the rock salt. The idea is to create a mixture with just the right stickiness to keep the salt from bouncing away. “You want to use provolone or mozzarella,” says a Milwaukee public works manager. “Those have the best salt content. You have to do practically nothing to it.”
Voilá – two messes equal a neat solution! Wisconsin officials still consider their cheese-coated streets an experiment, but it seems to be working out fine. And it’s just one example of a myriad of innovative alternatives being produced by local governments all across our country.
“Pouring Cheese on Icy Roads In, Where Else? Wisconsin,” The New York Times, December 24, 2013.