A dangerous germ that has been spreading around the country causes more life-threatening infections than public health authorities had thought and is killing more people in the United States each year than the AIDS virus, federal health officials reported yesterday.
The microbe, a strain of a once innocuous staph bacterium that has become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics, is responsible for more than 94,000 serious infections and nearly 19,000 deaths each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculated. Washington Post Story
First of all, Yikes.
Second of all, how did the germ "become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics"? It evolved. Antibiotics were used against the germs, killing most of them. Those that survived were the ones more resistant to the antibiotics. Their descendant germs inherited this resistance. Antibiotics killed most of that generation, those that survived were even more resistant, passing this improved resistance down the line. Repeat until you have a germ invulnerable to antibiotics.
Proof of evolution.
(Of course, fundamentalists will acknowledge "micro" evolution, but will say there is no such thing as "macro" evolution, by which they mean "human evolution". This is a nonsense distinction and is quite wrong.)
2 comments:
We received a letter from Rachel's school saying that several students at Clarksburg HS have the staph infection. I heard from another parent that it is the JV football team.
CJ
Uh, that sucks.
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