My beautiful, curly reddish-haired cherub of a boy, Simon, is dead. As short and cold as that sentence feels, that is how it happened. Hearty and healthy at one-and-a-half years of age, one spring morning seven years ago, Simon woke not feeling well. By afternoon, his face was cold and his breathing was labored. At nightfall he was bloated, covered in purple splotches and went into septic shock. The drugs Simon received failed, and he never woke up again. I need not delve into the feelings of desperate, painful insanity that I felt, and still feel, about this unfathomable experience. It is a parent's worst nightmare.
It is not possible for me to "wake up" from this nightmare. But we as a society must wake up and prevent other nightmares from occurring by preserving the efficacy of our antibiotics.
At the time of Simon's death, no one -- really, no one, including the highly competent University of Chicago health care providers -- knew why Simon had died. We learned only after an autopsy that Simon had contracted an antibiotic-resistant bacterium called, MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. And, it was the relatively new community-associated MRSA strain, not the more commonly known health care-associated strain. You're asking, "What is that?" That is what my husband and I (two Ph.D.-level professionals, mine in public health) asked as well. My husband and I racked our brains, endlessly wondering what we could have done to prevent Simon's death. To this day I do not know how Simon contracted this bug and why he was susceptible to it.
If someone had asked me, before Simon died, what I would do if I lost a child, I know that I would have responded something to the effect of not being able to go on with life. To my astonishment, people that I have met and would not have met if Simon had not died, such as other parents who lost children and a slew of health care and media folks, have somehow kept me afloat by validating my feeling that losing a child should not be allowed by the laws of nature. Others at the University of Chicago helped me focus on a bigger cause and made it possible to found the MRSA Research Center. The Center's mission is to understand and interrupt MRSA transmission through basic scientific and clinical research. We still do not know basic things like how MRSA is spread and why some people get sick from MRSA and others do not.
My personal goal at the MRSA Research Center is to make the term MRSA as familiar as AIDS and, most importantly, to raise awareness about the cause of the current MRSA epidemic: antibiotic resistance. Frequent, low doses of antibiotics not strong enough to kill all bacteria encourage some bacteria to develop means of survival or to become resistant. This results in stronger infections. Because of our society's overuse and misuse of antibiotics, we have created a perfect storm for such superbugs to thrive and wreak havoc. The more antibiotics we use and the more we use them improperly, the more bacteria evolve and become resistant -- slowly but surely rendering entire classes of wonder drugs useless.
I have always known that we are doing what we can at the MRSA Research Center, but I know that we are just addressing the tip of the iceberg -- 70 percent of antibiotics sold in the United States are given to healthy food animals, not people. Animals do not receive antibiotics the way humans do. Antibiotics are a regular feed supplement intended to increase growth and lessen the chance of infection in crowded, industrial farms. Antibiotics dispensed in this manner simply encourage bacteria to mutate. That is why a number of the "superbugs" like MRSA are showing up in food animals and industrial farms.
It is my strong personal and professional opinion that we have no choice but to regulate the largely unregulated use of antibiotics in food animals. Agribusiness is composed of people, people with families, parents with children. These people must know that it is in their own best interest to eliminate the routine use of antibiotics (the same antibiotics used to treat people) to promote growth in food animals.
There is something you can do to help honor Simon, and make sure that other mothers don't face the pain of losing a child to a malicious bacteria. Please join the new group, Moms for Antibiotic Awareness -- an initiative of the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming. We are working to raise awareness across the country on the routine use of antibiotics in food animal production and to engage moms and those concerned about their family's health to take action for more judicious use of these drugs. We are encouraging passage of legislation or regulation that would put an end to the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in food animal production. We also are asking restaurants, supermarkets and other food providers to offer more meat and poultry raised without the non-therapeutic use of these life-saving drugs.
We used to call my son, "sol" ("sun" in Spanish), and daughter, "luna" ("moon" in Spanish). When Simon died, I believed my sun would not rise again. What I did not realize is that Simon would keep giving me the gift of sunshine, every day, translated into hope that his life and death will serve as a catalyst for major and positive change. But I can't do this alone. I hope the ray of Simon's sun that shines on you motivates you to work together in our outrage at the mere thought that other children can suffer a demise similar to Simon's. We all created the problem. We now are all responsible for correcting it. Join the Moms for Antibiotic Awareness campaign at SaveAntibiotics.org and let's work together to keep these drugs working for every family.
David Kirby: MRSA in Meat: Why No Recall?
Andrew Gunther: Cargill's Tainted Turkey: Just the Tip of the Iceberg?
Mindy Pennybacker: Stop Drug-Resisant Staph From Spoiling Your Holiday Roast!
MRSA Infection Symptoms, Pictures, Treatment, Prevention, Causes ...
MRSA: Contagious, Symptoms, Casues, Prevention, Treatments
MRSA infection - MayoClinic.com
CDC - Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) Infections
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEkc70ztOrc
Every summer I go with our church youth group to visit a church we sponsor in rural Jamaica. Twice a day we visit their nursing home (you can only imagine the conditions of a nursing home in a third-world country!), and last year found the state of those patients worse than usual. We always use hand-sanitizer as soon as we leave the grounds, as there is no hot water for a good hand-scubbing. Last year I broke out with painful boils all over my body as soon as I got home, and before I could get to the doctor I was running a fever and vomiting. She had to lance and drain the sores (you cannot imagine how painful!). They tested positive for MRSA, and I was immediatly put on a strong antibiotic.
This year I am taking a tube of bacitracin ointment to put in the nasal passages of everyone and a bottle of Hibiclens - we will use that and cold water and scrub brushes!
Part of your article should have been about what to do about MRSA in your environment... months ago I read a piece right here on hp - the most "revolutionary" way to combat MRSA is to wash with a ph-balanced soap (not triclosan, not commercial detergents disguised as soaps) but your run of the mill hand made cold processed vegetable based soap (my farmer's market has a gal who makes it, etsy has a gazillion cottage industries that make soap here in the US).
Japan has the highest rates of horrific MRSA infections, and they are the most scrupulous in using chemical anti-microbials. Hospitals that clean with ph-balanced soaps have the lowest rates. Remember the phrase shoved down our throats in the 50s, 60s & 70s: "better living through chemicals"?
Stop feeling so powerless, people. Avoid factory farmed meat, get rid of the chemical cleansers (use vinegar, oil soaps, lavender water) - those few things will reduce your risk. But see, only the people who read my post will know that, as opposed to everyone who merely read the article.
One caught a drug-resistant staph infection in her bloodstream within hours after she had an outpatient angioplasty. The infection caused her lungs to stop working. The drugs they gave her to treat her lungs got together with the Cumadin they gave her post-heart procedure, she had internal bleeding, and the bleeding on her brain nearly killed her. She suffered with brain damage for years and never has fully recovered. I think that angioplasty ultimately wasn't worth it.
If I have to go to the doctor's office, I am extremely careful about touching things and washing my hands as soon as I get back in my car. I don't even like to visit people in a hospital. Both are veritable repositories of germs.
These places OUGHT to be scrubbed thoroughly every day. They OUGHT to smell like hospitals used to smell---of phenol. But they aren't.
Even though they may look clean enough, the examining paper changed between patients, and the tips of instruments either disposable or autoclaved, staff washes hands and/or uses gloves, the commonly touched surfaces are rarely cleaned. Doorknobs, walls, handles, elevator buttons, writing pens, chair arms, magazines, toys...all teeming with pathogens. All filthy.
Stay away from these places, people, if you possibly can.
Yet another reason to exercise, not smoke, and watch what you eat...
Now, try to avoid all of those places as well.
These animals are crowded so closely together that they are forced to cough, sneeze, vomit, urinate, bleed, defecate, attack and wound one another while breathing in ammonia filled air caused by standing in their own waste all day. This ammonia filled air burns away their mucus membranes causing increased respiratory infection rates.
This overcrowding and waste forces farmers to heavily drug these birds with antibiotics to stop disease spread in these unsanitary and overcrowded conditions.
Sometimes hundreds of thousands of birds can be crowded into one enormous barn/operation. Pigs are also overcrowded like this in factory farm operations.
The way to fight this animal and drug abuse is to support free range/organic farming which allows animals to forage in pasture for feed and behave normally.
I would like to add:
1. I agree with William Hunter Duncan below regarding decreasing subsidies over regulation reg. farm animals
2. MRSA is EVERYWHERE...at my hospital all pt.'s are swabbed routinely and many, many are carriers. I am afraid the horse is out of the barn on MRSA...we best develop more antibiotics to clean up this bug and use governement precaution to prevent the future superbugs.
3. I have found a useful precaution is to NEVER EVER trust health clubs as "clean" environments. I Shared yoga mats and gym equipment are teeming with MRSA.
4. Because MRSA is truly everywhere, you, and all of the other sufferers (myself included) did nothing to precipitate this horrid illness (Although I'm sure you know that).
Thank you for a thoughtful article. I hope your life has mended in whatever way possible.
I was speaking with a Dermatologist just months ago and he explained his irritation in the research community and government for not funding much research on MRSA even though it kills plenty of people every year. MRSA is almost always on every person it likes to live in the nasal passages so if you touch your nose your often spreading it around the body and then when a sore, pimple, scratch or rash gets any contact with MRSA then you have problems.
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