On 2/13/00, Andrej "See No Evil" Grubacic posted a link to the following
article by Tony "I Want My WebTV" Abdo
(http://www.levesinet.net/delorca/yae/nse1.htm) :

>
>
> On Board The Medical Titantic [sic]

"The HMO Titanic" would be cleverer, doncha think?

> by Tony Abdo
>
> The largest threat to human life in the future is the ecological breakdown
> occurring on the microbial level of our planet.

Actually the microbes are doing quite well. That's the problem. And in this
case, it's purely a human problem. The rest of the planet might be better
off without us.

> Put directly; the bugs are
> evolving faster than we are.

Hardly surprising, since their life cycle is about umpteen times shorter
than ours. What--Are you afraid they might evolve to the point where they
could take away your job?

>
> What does this mean, and why is nobody talking about it?
Nobody? Ever heard of "The Hot Zone"? Best seller. Check it out. Then
there's "The Coming Plague," "Our Stolen Future," "Gaia," and "Deadly
Feasts." You must have missed them. "Medical Nemesis." Published 30 years
ago. Also, an AltaVista search turned up 11,000+ hits on the subject of
drug-resistant microbes. But I guess "nobody" is a relative term.

> People are talking
> about it, but in a fractured and noncomprehensive way.

Case in point....

> The medical world is
> telling doctors not to prescribe so many antibiotics, while the ecology
> movement is focused on the degradation of forests, rivers, oceans, soil,
> atmosphere, etc., along with extinctions of life forms.
>
> But what is missing, is a synthesis of these fragmented pictures of the
> ecological breakdown and it's [sic] causes. We Marxists see this as a result
of
> capitalism misusing social resources. And this is true by itself, but still
> gives little picture to the nature or extent of what is happening.

Lake Baikal. The Aral Sea. Chernobyl. Yadda Yadda. Just curious: what human
system has NOT misused social resources?

>
> The Green angle expands our vision, so that we don't just see the problem in
> turns of the danger of a big bomb being dropped. This fear of nuclear weaponry
> and of nuclear plants going awry, was the first world introspecton into the
> possibility of human anihilation [sic]. Then along came the Greens, and we
began to
> worry about the loss of atmosheric [sic] integrity and the debasement of
terrestial
> resources.

News flash, Tony: above-ground nuclear tests were banned long before
"environmentalism" was even a word, let alone before the advent of the
Greens.
>
> But there appears to be a newer and even less understood ecological threat.
> That is the threat from the microbes. Now, it is not The Reds or The Greens
> sounding the alarm, but rather it is the alarm coming from within the
> capitalist medical establishment. They are saying that the plagues may return
> soon, and in even more horrifying form than in the past.

What became of your claim that "nobody is talking about it"?
>
> And they are right. This race to develop new lines of antibiotic resistance is
> the medical equivalent to the economic race to develop new forms of technology
> to "pump the economy".

This implies that the "race" is driven not by fear of superbugs, but by
macroeconomic imperatives--medical Keynesianism if you will--which
contradicts your argument.

> Or the madness of a cancerous growth that is growing
> and rapidly killing it's [sic] host at the same time.

That's why I hate cancers--they're so... mad! Why can't they be sane like
the rest of us?
>
> Microbiology, not Marxism, is the materialist science that now most underlines
> the fundamental unsustainability of the capitalist system. Unfortunately, most
> doctors and microbiologists have no understanding of Marxism, so they are
> poorly placed to spread the word about this new threat to humankind.

It's because they never get to read Lysenko, Tony. If only Stalinist science
were taught alongside capitalist science, things would be different.
>
> By themselves, the medical world is in no way capable of defending us from the
> new disease. This is because the whole basis of modern medicine is based on
> economic foundations, not science.

Evidence, please? Oh, never mind.
>
> A scientifically based medicine would not see the problems in terms of
> evolving microbes, alone. Microbes are only one aspect of the problem, and not
> even the major aspect at all. The conditions of the hosts are a more important
> aspect of why microbes are becoming resistent to antibiotics.
>
> Just why do modern humans need to use antibiotics to resist disease so often?

Um, because bacteria are everywhere, and we don't like to be sick? Just a
guess.

> This question is never asked by doctors. That's because they would lose their
> positions if they were to do so. Or at least they would, if they continued to
> attack the problem from this angle.

Gee, my doctor never gives me antibiotics unless I'm very sick, for
precisely this reason. I wonder why he still has his position? My HMO feels
the same way. Why can't they get with the capitalist program?
>
> Instead of focusing on not giving patient A an antibiotic, they would have to
> focus on getting patient A out of harm in the first place. What do I mean?

I've been wondering what you are talking about from the opening sentence.
>
> It's this simple. Patient A has acute bronchitis due to repeated exposure to
> air borne contaminants that have now produced a weakened host, one that now
> must resort to antibiotics to fight the imposed infection. This is the causory
[sic]
> source of antibiotic use.

As opposed to what? The "effectory source" of it?
>
> Or, let's take Patient B. Mom has brought her in, because the water supply is
> contaminated. An anitbiotic will now have to be used. Once again a weakened
> host is the cause of too much antibiotic use.

Hey! I get it! Let's not contaminate our water! Why hasn't anyone thought of
that? And while we're at it, let's not contaminate our air! Or our food!! We
should pass laws about this. We could call them.... the Clean Water Act! And
the Clean Air Act! A-and the Pure Food and Drug Act!! To the streets
comrades! We've not a moment to lose!!!!

>
> Patient C is a prisoner with TB, picked up while encarcerated [sic]. Patient D
is a
> civilian in Iraq. The medical establishment cannot defend us from the overuse
> of antibiotics.

A person just isn't safe on the street anymore, what with antibiotics
lurking in every alley, waiting to invade our bodies.


> They can attack the poblem [sic] only in a most superficial form.

Which is?
>
> The root cause of the problem is in the continuous debilitation of the host.
> Not just in the use of antibiotics in an "unnecessary" manner. "Scientific "
> medicine is in fact, unabe [sic] to tackle scientifically the problem. It must
> resort to false and ineffectual exhortations to doctors to not use
> antibiotics.

If we are so debilitated, why are we living twice as long, on average, as
our ancestors were barely a century ago?
>
> This will be where the coming ecological crash arrives from, wrecking havoc in
> our daily lives. It will come from disease. For those interested in this
> issue, I have put the WEB Site of The Allance For The Prudent Use Of
> Antibiotics below.

Uh... where exactly below, Tony?
>
> One can quickly determine the limitations that capitalist society has in
> defending humankind from this threat, by just carousing around this site
> briefly.

I don't feel like carousing right now. How about if I just mosey?

> What's not there, is of more interest than in what one actually
> finds. APUA is the international organization most involved in this issue.
> Antibiotics (ATB) are overused, and it's leading to a microbial resistance to
> all known antibiotics.

> Like oil, ATB use should have been used with great
> moderation, rather than reckless abandon.
Reality check: In the case of TB, superbugs are to a great extent the result
of patients failing to take their entire course of ATBs and thereby not
wiping out the TB bacilllus entirely. This leaves ATB-resistant bacilli to
multiply and invade other hosts. IOW, the problem is insufficient use, not
overuse.
> But with both ATB and petroleum, the
> desire to gain profits overrode any prudent use of limited resources.

ATBs are a limited resource? They dig them out of the ground somewhere? Gee,
and I thought the desire to not die of TB and other deadly diseases was the
prime cause.

>
> Now, oil reserves are coming to a point of extinction.

Endangered oil wells! Save the wild gusher!

> And microbes are
> evolving to forms that can't be easily hit, because modern capitalism sped up
> the need to resort to ATB use just as it sped up the need to use petroleum.
>
> What caused the speed up of the need to use ATB? Some of the biggest factors
> have to do with the speedup of the use of oil, or the struggle to control this
> resource militarily.

No! Not the dreaded MILITARY-BACTERIAL COMPLEX!!!!
>
> War and the automobile are two of the principle [sic] causes of the overuse of
ATB.
> War causes ATB overuse, principally because it spreads disease. Just the fact
> that the militaries of the world are the largest polluters along with the
> mining industry, is alone enough to expand the quantity of infectious disease
> world wide. And even much of mining output alone, goes into military hardware.

So wars are conspiracies among the pharmaceutical companies to create market
opportunities? Then they must have been real ticked off when Clinton
targeted that pharmaceutical plant at Sifra.
>
> But that is just the beginning. War destroys economic infrastructure, and with
> that comes infectious disease. Much of modern warfare is based on overuse of
> petroleum resources, and most of the battles are fought to gain control over
> the declining mineral deposits, or other natural resources.

And in the 20th century, those wars would be....? (Other than the Gulf War,
or course.)
>
> The car has as it's [sic] support system the highway. In the US, interstate
highways
> were built to provide increased mobility for the military.

And the Internet was built for similar reasons. Ergo: Internet evil.

> But the car alone
> causes an incredible increase in infectious disease and the need to use ATB.

"Incredible": le mot juste!
> How so?
>
> Easiest to see, is that internal combustion causes respiratory distress on a
> mass scale.

Question: was London's air cleaner during Dickens' time, or now? Get back to
me when you have the answer.


> ATB has to be used to treat people with sinus problems,
> bronchitis, asthma,and all the other myriad respiratory infections.

Uh, asthma is not treated with ATBs, Tony.

> Before the
> advent of ATB, people died of pneumonia often in their 30s and 40s.

And your point is? Bring back early death?

>
> But the problem wih the auto is even more insidious. Cars spread chemical
> contaminants, that cause cancer over and beyond respiratory cancer.

I think the term is "lung cancer."

> Accidents
> maim millions world wide each year. What happens when the injured with
> neurological problems, physical injuries, or cancer arrive to the hospital?
> They must be treated for infectious diseases that attach themselves to
> compromised hosts.

Accidents are a capitalist conspiracy to compromise our bodies and sell
ATBs. I see. Ever see Dr. Strangelove? Remember Jack T. Ripper? He beat you
to it. Only it was the commies who were "sapping our precious bodily
fluids." But maybe you got it right and he got it wrong.
>
> Yet there are still more capitalist causes to ATB overuse. Prisons and
> poverty. The whole concept of the prison is to degrade and punish. All the
> prisons world wide, are breeding laboratories for infectious disease.
> Prisoners are often denied even the most basic hygeine as a form of
> punishment. US prisons are some of the worst in the industrialized world. They
> pose a real international security risk to all of us, no matter how innocent
> we may be.

Tony, you apparently have the US penal system confused with that of the
heroic people's democracies of Iraq and Yugoalavia. Did you catch that
section in the Human Rights Watch report about Dubrava Prison, where
Andrej's comrades in the Serb army fragged and machine gunned prisoners to
fabricate a NATO war crime?
(http://www.hrw.org/hrw/reports/2000/nato/Natbm200-01.htm#P383_103805 ) No
ATBs used there, I'll bet.

>
> Add the artificial squalor imposed on the great masses of the impoverished
> throughout the world.

I much prefer natural squalor myself.

> Billions living without adequate drainage of sewage or
> adequate drinking water. ATB will be overused. There is no operative
> prevention to decrease the need to prescribe ATB.

Abdo to Impoverished Masses: Drop Dead. I'm sure they will appreciate your
humane prescription for their children's dysentery. I must have missed all
those overprescribed ATBs when I was living in Central America.
>
> Now, let's add the cesspool that is called the hospital. Treatment from an
> infection control standpoint should be given without worker speedup, and in
> the home as opposed to concentrating sick people at one point in the hospital,
> where they can easily cross contaminate each other and the workers. But pofits
> are concentrated at the hospital and not at the home; and with speedup, not
> without it. There is going to be a huge amount of unnecessary use of ATB.

So we would expect the "enlightened" practices you advise to be prevalent in
socialist countries. And the answer is....
>
> All these things should be obvious. But the capitalist medical system
> approaches the problems of it's world with the following strategy. If a cause
> can't be fixed within the system as it is, just pretend that it doesn't exist.

Oh, they know it exists: "Iatrogenic disease." Look it up. Or, ask your
doctor.
>
> This can be seen in the extreme with the current CDC (Center for Disease
> Control) approach to protecting medical workers. They encourage the use of a
> fantasy called "Universal Precautions". This is to treat every patient as if
> they can spread infection by all possible avenues. The CDC advocates total
> barrier protection.
>
> Sounds nice. But in fact, one would have to be behind a robotic arm to
> accomplish this in the concrete. The fact that it can't be done in the real
> world does not keep CDC from advocating that "Universal Precautions" be the
> principle [sic] technique to protect health workers.

But treating sick people at home, where they can infect other people AND
health workers, is better. I see.
>
> It's a form of magic. Say do and it's done. Or at least the CDC gets to state
> that it has tackled the problem (and supposedly from a scientific angle, at
> that).
>
> The reality is, that capitalist health care can only resort to magic and a mad
> rush to continually develop new ATB to outpace the growing resistance of
> infectious disease. Disease, that has been promoted via unhealthy living and
> ecological decay. Who will win this mad race? It appears that our lives now
> depend on the outcome.

"If we don't succeed, we risk failure" --Dan Quayle
>
> The only other posible solution, would be to do away with capitalism and
> return rationality to economic activity. It may be too late to do even that,
> since the total ecology of the planet has been severely disrupted. Even down
> to the level of the bacteria. They are evolving, and we are not.

I think you should just speak for yourself.
>
> It is clear, that the current approach of telling doctors to prescribe less
> ATB is not science, but rather more magical in concept. It's [sic] only
strength, is
> that at least it states that there is a problem. This is an improvement over
> the public relations angle that capitalist medicine is on the brink of solving
> all.
>
> The sad truth is, we are on board a medical titanic.  It is easy to say that
> there are no simple solutions. The hard solution may be the only solution.
> Capitalism ignores ecology. That's why it's not sustainable.

Next week's topic: If socialism is so sustainable, why is it, not
capitalism, the one that is extinct?
>
> Tony Abdo