Doctors Worried About Super-Bug's Resistance to Antibiotics

Here in America we have become used to the idea that whatever problem we have...there's a pill for that.

Some years ago we started taking antibiotics for every little thing that ailed us.  We even started feeding them to all the farm animals we eat once the feedlots found out it could make the animals grow faster and also keep them from getting sick on massive feedlots.

But what happens when some type of bug comes around that antibiotics can't cure?

 Here's Why Doctors Are So Worried About the New Superbug

 A much-feared superbug gene has been found for the first time in the United States, and it has health officials very worried.

The gene, called mcr-1, was found in a woman from Pennsylvania who had a bad infection last month. In her case, it was an E. coli bacteria. But scientists say this particular gene can turn up in any bacteria, including strains that are already hard to treat, and that's what's scare. Here are a few things to know about mcr-1:

It spreads badness

Mcr-1 is found on a little piece of DNA called a plasmid, which bacteria can pass very easily from one to another. Plasmids can even be passed between species — a kind of interspecies bacterial sex. Patrick McGann at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research outside Washington, D.C. likens it to a truck. "We refer to them as promiscuous plasmids," McGann said. "This truck comes up and it picks up a load and moves it to another loading dock." In this case the load is a gene that gives bacteria the ability to survive treatment with an important antibiotic. Bacteria are already able to mutate at a blinding rate, but plasmids provide an extra shortcut to mutation.

Public health experts have been screaming about antibiotic resistance for years. More than two million people in the U.S. are infected by drug-resistant germs each year, and 23,000 die of their infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What the CDC fears is a return to the "pre-antibiotic era," when people died by the millions from infections such as pneumonia or strep throat, from infected cuts and scrapes and after childbirth.

Bacteria develop resistance to drugs quickly. By the time the first antibiotic, penicillin, was introduced in 1943, staphylococcus germs had developed resistance. It only took nine years for a strain of tetracycline-resistant Shigella to evolve after that drug hit the market in 1950. MRSA turned up two years after methicillin's development in 1960.

The last new antibiotic to be introduced was ceftaroline, in the cephalosporin class, in 2010. It took just a year for the first staph germ to emerge that resisted its effects. "Every currently available antibiotic is a derivative of a class discovered between the early 1900s and 1984," Pew's Antibiotic Resistance Project says on its website. Drug companies are reluctant to work on developing new antibiotics because they are not very profitable. President Barack Obama has made fighting antibiotic resistance a priority for his administration, but development of new drugs and tests takes years.

Here;  http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/here-s-why-doctors-are-so-worried-about-new-superbug-n581701

The Bible says there will be PESTILENCE in the Last Days.  Throughout history humans have had black plagues, typhoid, small pox and a myriad of other outbreaks that have killed millions.  Here in America we don't even give the possibility of a massive plague a passing thought!

"That could never happen here!  This is America!"

Just imagine the fear that would sweep the nation if some type of airborne disease starts wiping out thousands.  People would be scared to go the malls.  Schools would close, professional sporting events held in stadiums holding tens of thousands would be ghost towns, NASCAR races would be empty....and the American way of life would shut down causing serious consequences to our beloved economy.

We need to remember to give thanks to God for everyday where we enjoy getting out of bed, driving to work, going to a movie, taking in a baseball game, traveling in a jet to Cancun, buying anything our heart desires at the grocery store or mall....because a superbug sweeping the nation killing thousands would totally transform our normal lives.

We can certainly hope that an event like this won't transpire in America until after the rapture...but we need to remember that in these strange days in which we live...anything is possible.  Nobody owes America a forever life of health, wealth and longevity.