WaPo | “It’s hard to imagine worse news for public health in the United States,” Lance Price, director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center and
a George Washington University professor said in a statement Thursday
about the Pennsylvania case. “We may soon be facing a world where CRE
infections are untreatable."
Scientists rang the alarm bells
about the gene in November, but not enough attention was paid. “Now we
find that this gene has made its way into pigs and people in the U.S.,"
Price said. "If our leaders were waiting to act until they could see the
cliff’s edge—I hope this opens their eyes to the abyss that lies before
us.”
Scientists and public health officials have long warned
that if the resistant bacteria continue to spread, treatment options
could be seriously limited. Routine operations could become deadly.
Minor infections could become life-threatening crises. Pneumonia could
be more and more difficult to treat.
Already, doctors had been
forced to rely on colistin as a last-line defense against
antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The drug is hardly ideal. It is more than
half a century old and can seriously damage a patient’s kidneys. And
yet, because doctors have run out of weapons to fight a growing number
of infections that evade more modern antibiotics, it has become a
critical tool in fighting off some of the most tenacious infections.
