Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA

Via several real-life firsthand accounts, public-health journalist McKenna lays bare, often all too graphically, the ravages of a disease with the potential to do grievous international harm because there is virtually no known treatment for it. Although humans and staphylococci have been close travelling companions virtually forever, and those pesky germs occasionally make our travels difficult, once upon a time scientists believed they had discovered the key to stifling staph infections forever: antibiotics. Case closed. But not so fast. There is a particularly feisty, methicillin-resistant strain, staphylococcus aureus, aka MRSA, that apparently has plans to outlast and outlive by outsmarting just about every known antibiotic thrown at it. First thought to reside solely within the walls of hospitals and to affect those with severely compromised immune systems, MRSA surreptitiously evolved a street persona. With the bacteria’s quick-changing, deadly brothers lurking in hospitals, gyms, and locker rooms, experts at the epicenter of research report that the hunt for a vaccine may be a last-ditch strategy to fend off a wily predator. --Donna Chavez
Review
“Superbug is essential reading for anyone going to the hospital or working in healthcare. Too often even top doctors dismiss the threat, saying ?the germs are everywhere.' Patients and medical professionals should read this book and take its lessons seriously.”
- Betsy McCaughey, Ph.D., Founder, Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths

“A well described and documented narrative of an important emerging infectious disease which goes behind the tabloid headlines to show the tragedy and toll of a frightening illness and a public health challenge.”

- Jeffrey P. Koplan, MD, MPH, Vice President for Global Health and Director of the Emory Global Health Institute, Emory University, former Director, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

“Like a modern-day Rachel Carson, Maryn McKenna sounds a powerful alarm about the insurgency of a deadly infection lurking in our schools, our gyms and even our food. Antibiotics are losing their life-saving powers because of our injudicious use that has helped spawn these increasingly invincible pathogens. By connecting the dots, Superbug may give us the early warning we need to prevent an uncontrollable epidemic.”

- Shelley A. Hearne, DrPH, Managing Director, Pew Health Group, The Pew Charitable Trusts


http://www.amazon.com/Superbug-Fatal-Menace-Maryn-McKenna/dp/141655727X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270159318&sr=8-1

Prepare to be outraged by the work of University of Iowa professor Tara Smith and veteran Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Andrew Schneider. Prepare also to give up industrially produced pork, if you're still eating (or, even worse, cooking with) the stuff.

First, some background. No one disputes that a bacteria called MRSA -- methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- has become a major public-health menace.

According to a recent post on Schneider's Secret Ingredients blog, the Center for Disease Control reported 94,360 "invasive MRSA infections" in the United States in 2005 -- of which 18,650 resulted in death. More people now die of MRSA than of AIDs.

http://www.grist.org/article/meat-wagon-filthy-swine/

Also MRSA in our prisons.