Alternative Products – Antibiotic Fail

Americans Are Using Fish Antibiotics

Unfortunately many Americans cannot afford to visit a doctor and get a prescription for antibiotics. Because humans and animals use the same antibiotics, many Americans are using antibiotics for pet fish. They can buy them over the counter at pet stores.

This has three main issues:

The product is intended to be dissolved in water and absorbed through a fish’s skin. So it isn’t the same
Antibiotics can have side-effects, so you need a doctor to make the decision
Abuse of antibiotics leads to resistance

1000-year-old Remedy Kills MRSA

MRSA, as you probably know, is an antibiotic-resistant superbug. On a whim, UK researchers have tested the abilities of a recipe found in Bald’s Leechbook, a thousand-year-old compendium of medical advice and potions.

Take cropleek and garlic, of both equal quantities, pound them well together… take wine and bullocks gall, mix with the leek… let it stand nine days in the brass vessel…

Intended to cure eye infections, it looks like it might help in the fight against MRSA.
I say might, because Wikipedia already lists a number of other natural MRSA killers – like honey, akin, cannabis – but none are doing the job for us yet.

The Poo Remedy

The correct term is fecal transplant – it involves liquidizing the stool of a healthy donor, and then injecting it into the patient’s large intestine. This can recolonize the healthy bacteria in your gut, if it has been lost due to the overuse of antibiotics. So far it has had great success, but there are regulatory hurdles to overcome. The FDA only approves drugs, devices, vaccines and tissues. Feces aren’t in their brief, and without the permission of the FDA, clinical trials cannot proceed.

The condition it has fixed (90% of the time) is a Clostridium difficule infection that results in constant diarrhea because it has taken over the gut and good bacteria are unable to re-establish themselves.

The full story is at Scientific American.