Peter L. Borst wrote:
> The problem of the battle between mankind and a whole plethora of
> pathogens was touched upon in my January 2007 article in the ABJ. This
> is not a fight we can win; we make advances and then they do. This
> issue has implications for honey bee health as much as human and the
> health of all organisms that are affected by our care or lack of it.

My last post on this since it seems to be just Peter and I posting on it.

If we maintain the same approach, I agree that bacteria will keep 
advancing to keep pace with our advances. However, even with the 
current approach, if you look at mortality statistics, almost all show 
that they have reminded fairly static over the years and, if there are 
trends, they are down. Plus, bacterial infection mortality is less 
than 2% of all disease related deaths. Most of those deaths are 
hospital cleanliness issues. Clean hospitals have a much lower 
incidence of bacterial infections.

I read the literature on this very carefully since I volunteer weekly 
at a local hospital and have to transport people with MSRA and 
communicable diseases.

Plus, my youngest son is very susceptible to staph infections and did 
have necrotizing fasciitis, or skin eating disease, a bacterial 
infection. He survived because of antibiotics. So we share a deep, 
personal interest in the subject.

Current research is looking at the bacteria themselves and how they 
develop resistance. The research is very promising and the resistance 
mechanism could be bypassed. So I would be careful in declaring defeat 
in the war. There are a host of pathogen caused diseases that we 
seldom see anymore, yet were killers in their day.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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