Evolving Germs

For anyone that still harbors doubts about the validity of evolutionary theories, just stay away from South Africa and your ignorance shouldn't hurt you immediately. For the rest of us Darwinists, our most recent vindication is rather unfortunate.

The World Health Organization is now organizing an urgent meeting because a new Drug-resistant strain of Tuberculosis has EVOLVED to such an extent that it is virtually untreatable with any commonly available medication. Worse, it has already been transmitted worldwide.

Now, after a sprinkling of cases across the globe, a particularly virulent outbreak has arisen in South Africa. "This deadly strain of tuberculosis has killed 52 of 53 people infected in the last year in South Africa," the World Health Organization said on Friday, calling for improved measures to treat and diagnose the bacteria.

"The strain was discovered in Kwazulu-Natal, and is classified as extremely drug-resistant. Drugs from three of the six second-line medicines, used as a last line of defense against TB, proved useless against the new strain.

"We are extremely worried about the issue of extreme drug resistance," said Paul Nunn, coordinator of the WHO's drug resistance department. "If countries don't have the diagnostic capacity to find these patients, they will die without proper treatment."

"Drug resistance is a common problem in TB treatment, but the new strain appears particularly virulent: 52 of the 53 patients infected all died within about three weeks of being tested for drug resistance.

The real problem we face is that everyone in the medical community fully expects the germ to continue in its evolution, and if the WHO fails to contain its spread, we could find ourselves regressing back to the equivalent of the pre-anti-biotic era with no effective way to treat a very deadly disease.

My mother has been warning me for years not to use bactericidal soaps and cleansers in the house in order to avoid breeding "super-bugs." Then again, she was always a Darwinist. I'm so proud of her.

Image and details from www.futura-sciences.com