Superbugs Capable of Resisting the Strongest Drugs Found in Hospitals

The BBC programme "Horizon - defeating the superbugs" showed an experiment of bugs developing resistance to antibiotics.<p>They had a large tray (about a metre by three metres?) divided into several sections. At each end was regular gel food. Then in slices the gel had anti-biotics dissolved in it in higher concentrations. In the middle they could not dissolve any more anti-biotic, they had reached the solubility level. (This would have been toxic for people). The bacteria had no problem evolving to this level.<p>(<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ms5c6" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ms5c6</a>)<p>Unfortunately, it's not available on BBC iPlayer anymore.<p>I ahem 'found' this clip on YouTube. (<a href="http://youtu.be/2w38Ry1WHh0" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/2w38Ry1WHh0</a>)

I wanted to make a glib comment about overuse of antibiotics in farm animals. Reading a little deeper, that 50% mortality rate is really scary. I guess, those are people already in the hospital, so their immune system is already taking a hit, but wow. 50%.

It is reassuring to me that while these "superbugs" are still outside of people they are 100% susceptible to being destroyed by soap and scrubbing.

&#62; The emergence of deadly, bacteria resistant hospital superbugs is on the rise according to the CDC.<p>Given this crisis produced by natural selection, it's amazing to think that only 39% of Americans believe in evolution:<p><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/darwin-birthday-believe-evolution.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/darwin-birthday-believe-ev...</a>

well, I am not sure, why it is on hackernews, but it growing resistances of bacterias to antibiotics are indeed a huge problem.<p>If you think about giving birth to your next child in a hospital, think twice about that. Multi resistant bacterias, like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus are a danger.<p>A friend of mine and his newborn just had such complications to endure.<p>New research shows that 4% of hospital patients get infected anually in Germany and another 4% dies from those complications.

While it's bad enough already, note that since bacteria can "hot swap" genetic information it's the CR property itself which is surviving and spreading. This is a pretty fascinating example of evolution at the sub-individual level.