Saturday, June 10, 2017

post-sophisticate medicine

“The world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era in which common infections will once again kill. If current trends continue, sophisticated interventions, like organ transplantation, joint replacements, cancer chemotherapy, and care of pre-term infants, will become more difficult or even too dangerous to undertake. This may even bring the end of modern medicine as we know it."
That’s what the Director-General of the World Health Organization said last April when she appeared before the United Nations. Dr Margaret Chan wanted to warn of what many deem to be one of the greatest threats to global health today: the increasingly common problem of infections that do not respond to antibiotic treatment.
It sounds alarmist, but it might actually not be alarmist enough.
Once again, a simple scrape may be a prescription for the grave.

1 comment:

  1. And then there are those ancient afflictions lurking in the warming arctic. Who needs war?

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