Are Antibiotics the Answer?

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In the modern age, people place great faith in the power of antibiotics to protect them from disease. However, many diseases are proving to be antibiotic-resistant. Antibiotics (any drug that either kills bacteria or hampers their growth) are no longer solving the problem as they once did.

Staph super germ MRSA successfully resisted the first new type of antibiotic in 35 years—a little more than just one year after it was introduced.

Penicillin and the more powerful drug vancomycin once easily controlled the staphylococcus bacteria. But staph has now transformed into a superbug, which in many instances now has the capability to resist penicillin and vancomycin. Thousands die each year in America from incurable hospital-acquired staph infections. Many now are those who have friends or family who have battled this scourge—some losing and some winning the battle.

A September 2010 Associated Press article reported, “An infectious-disease nightmare is unfolding: Bacteria that have been made resistant to nearly all antibiotics by an alarming new gene [in the bacteria] have sickened people in three states and are popping up all over the world, health officials reported...How many deaths the gene may have caused is unknown; there is no central tracking of such cases. So far, the gene has mostly been found in bacteria that cause gut or urinary infections. Scientists have long feared this—a very adaptable gene that hitches onto many types of common germs and confers broad drug resistance, creating dangerous ‘superbugs.’

“‘It’s a great concern,’ because drug resistance has been rising and few new antibiotics are in development, said Dr. M. Lindsay Grayson, director of infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne in Australia. ‘It’s just a matter of time’ until the gene spreads more widely person-to-person...”

The article quoted microbiology professor Dr. Patrice Nordmann at South-Paris Medical School: “‘The ingredients are there’ for widespread transmission, he said. ‘It’s going to spread by plane all over the world.’”

Do you doubt this? Think. 500 million people fly internationally every year. 70 million work outside their country.

What Went Wrong?
How did these near unstoppable bacteria grow to such formidable strength? Sadly, mankind invited them—by overusing antibiotics. Doctors, threatened with lawsuits if they cannot demonstrate that they did everything possible to protect a patient from possible disease, have now been overprescribing antibiotics for years.

For each decade following the invention of penicillin, physicians prescribed antibiotics as a “cure-all”: Have an earache? Take some Amoxicillin. Have bronchitis? Try Zithromax. Sinusitis? Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Still won’t go away? Take moxifloxacin. It’s stronger.

Entire generations have grown up with this thinking. Nearly every trip to the doctor ends with a stop at the local drugstore—antibiotic prescription in hand.

Over time, bacteria “learn” to resist antibiotics. After an unwanted bacterium is introduced to the body, the immune system fights back. Physicians will typically then prescribe antibiotics to aid the immune system. But, with each use, bacteria can begin and then continue to “resist” the drugs, using certain “tricks.” Some make themselves less permeable and the antibiotic cannot be absorbed. Others change their structure so antibiotics no longer recognize it and cannot find it to destroy it.

In the worst case, researchers now document bacteria that produce an enzyme to dissolve the antibiotic, rendering it useless. In effect, the hunter antibiotic has become the hunted!

Two Superbugs
The result is antibiotic-resistant hospital super-bacteria like Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) and MRSA.
Spores from MRSA can be entombed in a body during surgery, which if not treated soon after infection can result in the loss of a limb, or even death. This hard-to-cure superbug, which is an extreme staph infection, usually manifests itself as sores on the skin, but can also lead to fatal necrotizing pneumonia. Worse, MRSA can be carried unknowingly on hands, clothes, paper or even a “get well” card tied to a bouquet of flowers.
Doctors can take it into exam rooms, family members can infect a patient they are visiting—surgeons can even carry it into the operating room. Again, the bacterium can sneak in on a nose or hand, and can infect a person through a wound the size of a mosquito bite.

According to the CDC, “MRSA occurs most frequently among patients who undergo invasive medical procedures or who have weakened immune systems and are being treated in hospitals and healthcare facilities such as nursing homes and dialysis centers.” The organization also stated, “MRSA in healthcare settings commonly causes serious and potentially life threatening infections, such as bloodstream infections, surgical site infections, or pneumonia.”

As resistance to antibiotics has worsened, hospitals have had to resort to “the drug of last resort”—vancomycin—to combat MRSA.

Consider again the super bacteria C. difficile. The CDC describes it as “a bacterium that causes diarrhea and more serious intestinal conditions such as colitis.” Symptoms include diarrhea for two or more days, fever, loss of appetite, nausea, and abdominal pain or tenderness.

An estimated 28,000 people die of “C. diff” infections per year in America, which primarily occur in hospitals, and tens of thousands more in nursing homes also become infected.
The United Kingdom Department of Health recorded 36,674 deaths between 1997 and 2007 for the two infections (C. difficile claimed 26,208 and MRSA 10,466).

Researchers from the University of Nottingham reported, “Official figures show that 5,000 people die from a healthcare-associated infection every year in the UK and tackling the superbugs costs the NHS £1bn a year [approximately US$1.5 billion]. One in 12 of us will pick up an infection during a stay in hospital. There’s a one in 77 chance of contracting MRSA and a one in 50 chance of developing C. diff.”

An April 2008 CDC report showed that U.S. hospital patient infections doubled from 2001 to 2005.The New York Times reported, “Several years ago, the mortality rate from a C. difficile infection was around one to two percent. But today, various studies estimate that the death rate is six percent. The reason is that a hyper virulent strain has emerged that emits higher levels of toxins than earlier strains.”

Scientists fear community-acquired MRSA could team up with the swine flu virus to produce absolutely horrific results. Those whose immune systems are weakened by H1N1 virus then are highly susceptible to contracting MRSA-induced necrotizing pneumonia.

An infections expert at the University of Nottingham, Professor Richard James, told the Telegraph, “The threat from [community-acquired MRSA] in the US is a very serious concern, especially if there is an epidemic. It could trigger a large number of cases of necrotizing pneumonia, which has a mortality rate of 50 per cent in 72 hours.”

Each time man attempts to fix a problem, it generally ends up worse in the end. The case of antibiotics is no different. The solution has come back to bite humanity. The superbugs grow consistently more resistant with the passing of time, and many older diseases like tuberculosis, gonorrhea, yellow fever and cholera—once considered eradicated—are now re-emerging and, worse, are more difficult to cure than before they disappeared.
If just one looming disease pandemic runs through the now global “village,” weakened immune systems—and a dwindling arsenal of powerful drugs—will leave wide-open a door to other little-known diseases waiting in the wings.

Disease and the Modern World
The threat of disease is widespread. Dirty water, pollution, warfare, livestock, pets, wild animals, a lack of proper nutrition, and overall degeneration of the body (including weakened immune systems) are paving the way for a perfect storm of pandemics to come.
“Just because we’ve just had a pandemic does not mean we’ve decreased our chances of having another,” said Dr. Carolyn B. Bridges, an epidemiologist in the flu division of the CDC. “We have to stay vigilant” (The New York Times).
Consider how easy it is to spread disease in our modern society. A person going to another country on business or leisure contracts a disease, returns to his home country showing no symptoms, and infects those he comes in contact with. It is that easy.
An example of how disease can be spread in this modern age is West Nile Virus. It is believed that this disease was transported to the United States through mosquitoes that crossed the ocean in airplane wheel wells. They arrived in New York City in 1999.
Another was the rapid rise of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003. When this disease suddenly spread from China to infect people in 37 countries, it showed the glaring vulnerability of the world to disease epidemics.
In his book The Life of Reason, famed historian George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Judging from history, humanity is setting itself up for the “Mother of All Pandemics”—and maybe several, or even many. Most will choose to ignore the clear pattern of history—that history alwaysrepeats itself.
Take this out of the realm of sterile statistics. Make it real. Take heed and understand. These things will come to pass in your lifetime!
The entire world will soon learn that God is the only One who can truly cure or heal all forms of sickness and disease (Ex. 15:26; Psa. 103:3). God alone has the ability to forgive sin, which is directly related to why people get sick (Matt. 9:1-6; Psa. 41:3-4).
How will this come about?
What Is Prophesied to Come
From the time of Adam and Eve, mankind has lived in rebellion against God, breaking His laws with impunity. As a result, He has used pestilences to punish disobedience so that man could eventually learn the path to happiness and prosperity.
More than 3,000 years ago, God used a series of plagues to force the pharaoh in Egypt to release Israel from slavery (Exodus 7-12). Later, He brought a pestilence against Israel to punish King David (II Sam. 24:15).
God will yet again use pestilence to punish the nations. Notice this warning in Deuteronomy 28:1-68 “But it shall come to pass, if you will not hearken unto the voice of the Lord your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes which I command you this day; that all these curses shall come upon you, and overtake you: cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and your store. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your land, the increase of your kine, and the flocks of your sheep. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.
“The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto you, until He have consumed you from off the land, whither you go to possess it. The Lord shall smite you with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting [again, hot, dry winds and drought], and with mildew [too much rain]; and they shall pursue you until you perish.
“And your carcass shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away. The Lord will smite you with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof you cannot be healed. The Lord shall smite you with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart” (Deut 28:15-19, 21-22, 26-28).
In Revelation 6:8, God again specifically mentions using “beasts of the earth” to punish. Hungry animals desperate for food will attack vastly more people in the future. Others carrying every kind of disease will infect people. This is coming. It is sure!
Understand that even in the prosperous nations of the West, millions upon millions of vermin (including rats, but also bats, skunks, raccoons, chipmunks, squirrels, foxes and pigs) live side by side with human beings. In some of the biggest cities, they actually (greatly) outnumber people.
In the coming scramble for food, these creatures will compete with mankind for dwindling supplies, causing disease of every kind to spread like wildfire across many nations.
I take no pleasure in reporting the awful things of just this chapter. But they must be said. And you must be willing to heed.
When the terrible worsening of disease comes from just over the horizon panic will become the greatest pandemic. Sheer terror will keep people from buses, planes, trains, restaurants, schools, malls, homes, places of work, and virtually all indoor public places. Nothing will reassure them. Nothing will quiet their fear. (Remember that they will also be hungry.) Pause at least for a moment to ask where you expect to be.
Final Warning
The citizens of the countries privileged to be part of the Western world understand little about most of the diseases described. Usually it is only through newspaper headlines or news reports that they come to their attention. Even then, pandemic threats and health organizations’ gloomy statistics seem unreal.
Make no mistake! It is no longer a matter of if pestilence will strike these nations, but when. Millions upon millions will die. Recall that 82,000 people now die of disease every day, and that this translates to 30 million a year. Again, this would be the equivalent of the entire nation of Canada. But these people are dying the world over, not just in one place. If any whole city of 82,000 disappeared in one day, with all of its citizens dying in a host of terrible ways—and this always followed by a slightly bigger city wiped out the next day—the world would understand what is already happening.
Long ago, God foretold that disease would come on the peoples of the world if they did not obey Him. This is now happening—and is prophesied to grow FAR worse. Diseases now primarily found in the “Third World” are foretold to soon enter the West. Many scientists and doctors tell us these diseases are poised to “make the leap.”
Some scientists think they can control the spread of illness. How wrong they are! Modern medicine’s efforts to eradicate disease can be compared to a man attempting to plug the gash in the Titanic’s hull with caulking compound. The ship is going down!
The threat of global epidemics looms large over the earth. They are coming, they will happen, and they will threaten the very existence of civilization! Yet we have seen that disease is just another of the means God will use to punish a stubborn mankind. He will use others to shake the world…

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