Microbes Win: Drug-Resistant Infectious Diseases Are Out Of Control—But Only in the Context of Antibiotics

The fear of drug-resistant diseases is realistic—but only if we stay inside the modern medical paradigm. Of course, other approaches to health are being ruthlessly suppressed.

by Heidi Stevenson

15 April 2011

Just as we face the loss of our ability to manage our own health through nutrients, herbs, and other alternative methods, the news is out that the battle against drug-resistant infections has been lost. Antibiotics, along with antivirals and antifungals, have long been mainstream medicine's pride and joy. Big Pharma seems to be reaching the end of its ability to create new antibiotics, so it's unlikely that new drugs will be developed to replace those that are losing effectiveness.

Codex Alimentarius rules are being implemented throughout the world, and they will have devastating effects as access to natural means of health maintenance and healing are eliminated. Medicinal herbs are being banned. Vitamins and supplements are made illegal or their potency so severely restricted that they become useless. Alternative methods of treatment are under attack. Foods are full of poisons and empty of nutrition, and it's becoming more and more difficult to obtain real food. Even our right to know about alternatives is under attack.

All this is happening just as the flaws in modern medicine are becoming apparent, and nowhere is it more obvious than in the arena of disease-inducing antibiotics.

The Problem

The problem of new strains of bacteria emerging as a direct result of the use of antibiotics has been understood almost as long as antibiotics have existed. Yet, rather than deal with the primary known cause—overuse—modern medicine and agribusiness have all but ignored the issue. Some of the most well-known and feared diseases today are a direct result of their misuse. Before 1982, E coli was unknown as anything but a beneficial gut organism. Now, breakouts are commonplace—and most take place far from the original source of disease-inducing E coli, factory farms where animals are tortured.

Now, we're seeing the advent of even more virulent bacterial infections that are treatable only with exceptionally risky drugs, or cannot be stopped with any drugs. A few of these new diseases are variants of some of the most feared, including pneumonia and cholera. Some are so severe that they've taken on characteristics virtually unknown before, such as flesh-eating bacteria. There are varieties that are able to transfer the deviant genetic material directly to different bacterial species.

Lip service is paid to the problem, with even patients being blamed for making too many demands. Yet, the fact remains that doctors are still routinely overusing antibiotics, even to the point of prescribing them prophylactically when there is no particular danger of infection and giving them for conditions they can't treat, while factory farms use them massively as the only way to keep animals "well" enough to make it to the abattoirs and to produce bigger animals.

Less than two weeks ago, a doctor tried to give me combination antibiotic and steroid eye drops after eye surgery. It was routinely prescribed to every eye surgery patient in that hospital. I questioned the need, and found that the antibiotic was required for only one week; the four-week schedule was needed only for the steroid. He agreed to provide two separate prescriptions to allow the antibiotic to be taken for only as long as needed. At what point will patients become subject to literally blinding eye infections because of this misuse? Mine was only one case out of hundreds who pass through that facility every year, each one receiving exactly the same protocol of unnecessarily-long antibiotic treatment.

• Every day, children are given antibiotics for colds, though they can do nothing for virus-induced colds.
• Tamiflu, which provides only minimal relief from influenza, has resulted in a drug-resistant virus.
• Just as malaria moves into more northern climes, the frontline drug for its treatment has produced a bacteria resistant to it.
• Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) is killing tens of thousands every year.
• A drug-resistant form of cholera now stalks impoverished and disaster-hit areas of the world.
• Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is becoming an increasing problem, such that this killer of massive numbers is making a comeback.
• A new superbug, called NDM-1, started in India and is now spreading in the west, having been found in the UK. Worse is that there is not a single drug that can combat it. And going from worse to worst, NDM-1 is spreading its drug resistance capability to other bacteria.

The Response of the World's Leading Health Organization

Worse, though, is the response of those who should be leading us to deal with these issues. Instead, though, we're seeing either head-in-sand or bring-'em-on approaches. Obviously, the typical response of doctors is of the head-in-sand variety as they continue to overprescribe. However, what may be worse is the approach of the world's official health agency, the World Health Organization (WHO). They acknowledge the problem clearly:

This natural process has been vastly accelerated and amplified by a number of human practices, behaviours, and policy failures. Collectively, the world has failed to handle these fragile cures with appropriate care. We have assumed that miracle cures will last forever, with older drugs eventually failing only to be replaced by newer, better and more powerful ones. This is not at all the trend we are seeing.

Faulty practices and flawed assumptions have clearly made the inevitable development of drug resistance happen much sooner, rather than later.

So, what is their plan of action? While they do offer good advice regarding the massive overuse of antibiotics for unneeded Agribusiness purposes and by doctors, they are also pressing for a new, massive push to develop new antibiotics.

Yes, you read that right. The now obviously bankrupt approach of trying to implement health through antibiotics, which have resulted in far worse diseases than the ones treated by existing drugs, is what the WHO advocates as the primary tool for dealing with the problem, in spite of acknowledging that all antibiotics will result in new drug-resistant diseases.

And that, of course, is pure insanity. To fully recognize the danger inherent in a system that's resulting in worse disease than that it set out to combat, the WHO advocates more of the same.

What Options Do You Have?

Clearly, expecting modern medicine to resolve the advent of virulent drug resistant microbes is like asking the executioner to protect the prisoner. The modern medical paradigm's deep flaw is apparent in this obviously doomed-to-fail approach. But, it knows no other way.

That, though, does not mean there is no hope. This is a perfect time to step back and take a rational look at modern medicine's insane approach to health, most notably its flawed view of health itself. The primary way of viewing each person is to seem him or her as a bunch of body parts, each of which can be treated separately, and to see health as something that can be forced on a body through the imposition of drugs and surgery. While these certainly have an important place, when they're viewed as the means to health, then medicine is missing the point.

Prevent Disease—Be Healthy

The simple fact is that the best approach to disease prevention is health itself. Healthy bodies are subject to few serious diseases. Diabetes is almost entirely a disease of the modern lifestyle and diet. Cancer results primarily from our toxic environment, including modern medicine's treatments. Asthma was extremely rare in children before vaccinations became so prevalent. All vaccinatable diseases were in steep decline before vaccinations were available, simply because of better access to food, clean water, and sanitation. Today, we see diseases like cholera primarily in poverty-stricken areas.

There is no avoiding the reality that good health equates to low disease incidence. Thus, the single most important thing you can do to avoid infections of all sorts is to improve your health. Eat a good diet that includes foods obtained from natural production methods. Exercise. Avoid drugs and vaccines whenever possible.

Even so, there are occasions when disease will hit. Nowadays, even if you never see the inside of a hospital or Agribusiness monstrosity, it may even be a drug-resistant disease. There are, though, a couple of excellent natural methods you can use to treat them, and you can do so without the dangers inherent in drugs and surgeries: colloidal silver and Manuka oil & honey.

Two upcoming articles will cover these excellent treatments for infections. Keep an eye out for them!

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