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Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by trhway on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @06:24PM (#12082680)
>Basically, it's exactly the worst thing you can possibly do, with regards to what the theory of evolution by natural selection tells us.

from the half-full glass POV we are just speeding up the natural selection of bacteria resistant humans (it has been going for millenia and got, probably only temporary, delayed for the last 80 years). Also, as a side effect, it can help solve (at least temporarily) the overpopulation issue until the much more smart (wrt. health and Earth resources usage) humans evolve. Basic dialectics at work.

Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by stcredzero on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @07:00PM (#12082834)
from the half-full glass POV we are just speeding up the natural selection of bacteria resistant humans)

Often, what's good for species evolution is really bad for some individuals. What good is a half-full glass to you if you're dead?

Also, as was noted elsewhere in the discussions, evolutionary pressure for bacteria to attain an immunity is high, but pressure to lose one is usually much lower. However, bacteria are small, and such pressure is higher than in more complex celled creatures. "Shelving" antibiotics does work, but would require widespread cooperation and the curbing of feeding antibiotics to livestock.

Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by pmalynin on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @08:14PM (#12083163)
>What good is a half-full glass to you if you're dead?

What bad is it if you're dead?

Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by stcredzero on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @08:22PM (#12083215)
You first!
Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by vacri on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @08:31PM (#12083256)
Having antibiotic failure as the method for arresting the massive human population (7B people) would require carnage that makes World War II (~70M deaths) pale in comparison, even if you correct for the lower global population of the day.
Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by dredmorbius on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @10:38PM (#12083599)
Disease has typically killed more than wars. The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 killed 50-100 million people, several percent of the total world population. By comparison, total military and civilian dealths in WWI were about 16 million.
Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by vacri on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @11:51PM (#12083787)
Oh, I agree - I just used WWII as it's a more commonly-understood datapoint. The Spanish Flu epidemic only took a couple of years as well, as opposed to the half-decade of WWII.
Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by trhway on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @11:03PM (#12083657)
why carnage? just some sterilizing effect of some bacterial infection would do it.
Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by vacri on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @11:50PM (#12083783)
People dying of infection is not pretty, especially at scale.
Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by trhway on Wednesday July 13, 2016 @12:39AM (#12083910)
"sterilizing" means destroying the ability to produce next generation. No dying involved. It may be some very light infection, just with a sterilizing side-effect for example.
Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by fweespeech on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @09:51PM (#12083472)
> from the half-full glass POV we are just speeding up the natural selection of bacteria resistant humans (it has been going for millenia and got, probably only temporary, delayed for the last 80 years). Also, as a side effect, it can help solve (at least temporarily) the overpopulation issue until the much more smart (wrt. health and Earth resources usage) humans evolve. Basic dialectics at work.

Bacteria evolves resistance at about the same rate as people develop defenses.

So yeah, if you don't mind killing off a huge segment of the population and having women die in childbirth regularly.

Re:A 'slow catastrophe' unfolds as the golden age of antibio... by taneq on Tuesday July 12, 2016 @08:15PM (#12083179)
> from the half-full glass POV we are just speeding up the natural selection of bacteria resistant humans

Bahaha that's one way to look at it. I guess we have plenty of humans to spare.