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Comment by FreeKill | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I read a story like this (there have been dozens lately), I simply don't have the background to determine how big of a problem this is going to be. Are these bugs antibiotic resistant just to current antibiotics? Is the only reason we have nothing that currently kills them is because it's not profitable for research into fighting them? Basically, what I'd love to know is are we on the cusp of a new Black Plague type of scenario with antibiotic resistant bugs or is it simply a problem that we haven't been working on?

I read somewhere a while back that no one has really been focusing on new forms of antibiotics because the old ones worked, and it's not profitable for pharmaceuticals to research it, as it's the type of drug a person takes for a limited time only (aka non-chronic) so the profit potential is much lower than say AIDS medication. Not sure how much truth there is to that however...

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"what I'd love to know is are we on the cusp of a new Black Plague type of scenario with antibiotic resistant bugs or is it simply a problem that we haven't been working on?"

The answer to the first question is: quite possibly, but with something like tuberculosis instead of the plague. Less immediately scary, but more harmful: resistant forms of more common bacteria will create serious risks when undergoing any sort of surgical procedure. We could get back to the days when your biggest risk of surgery was dying from infection afterward.

The answer to you second question is: no, we haven't really been working on it. But the big problem is that we can't just invent new classes of antibiotics overnight. If one of these strains takes off, things will get a lot worse before they get better.

Could UV light be used at waste plants and hospitals to help prevent this kind of bacteria from spreading?

Yes, UV light would be more effective than chlorination at killing most of this stuff. But, you know...good luck convincing people to add expensive UV systems to their sewage effluent.

Apparently there is anyway movement to UV, as it is safer than handling/dealing with chlorine (at least, this is what someone tells me about the industry in the US).

UV is certainly easier to deploy than chlorine gas (a UV leak won't poison everyone in the room via gas inhalation), but it's still dangerous at the scales used to sterilize large quantities of water.

The bigger problem than either is that AFAIK, few places bother to sterilize their effluent. I'm not even sure if San Francisco bothers to do that, actually...

New Scientist has an article in this weeks number about sunshine and fresh air working as "antibiotics", and how the use of air and light could reduce the risk of infections in hospitals.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029470.700-fresh-air...

UV is used in some wastewater reclamation plants, it is the new how shit as of about 10 years ago. But with all things the volume of water being treated determines which processes are used, I know of a UV only plant that processes 37million gallons a day via UV. Thirty minutes away at a larger facility that treats 150million gallons a day they use chlorine only. These are massive facilities, and to change the processes used is a massive undertaking, expecting them to be able to pivot over night is not realistic.

For some information on the scope of the problem, I found this report useful. http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/

Frontline did an episode that covers resistance and the lack of new antibiotic drug development. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hunting-the-nightmar...

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