Biggest Biosecurity Threat? Antibiotic Resistance

Hi, I'm an EA working in a prominent antibiotics resistance lab. From my point of view, antibiotics resistance is a big issue, resistance is growing, HOWEVER, there are actually a lot of medications in the pipeline that are effective but weren't brought to market because it's not financially viable right now (that I heard in a talk by Floyd Romesberg). There are also other interesting therapies like antimicrobial peptides (explanation here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15761415 ). My lab developed an ML model that will help doctors in Israel select the most optimal antibiotic (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-019-0503-6 ) and also sequencing is getting so good that it's not improbable that in 10 years, IF THERE WILL BE A NEED you'd come to the Doctor, he'll swab you and get a full antibiotics resistance profile, and prescribe you a medication accordingly.

The reason that these medications and technologies aren't implemented is that antibiotics resistance is still more or less manageable, it is not at a crisis level. Unlike pandemics, a global antibiotics resistance crisis doesn't rise in one day (though it is quick! there was essentially very little 70 years ago) so that means that was the situation to become worse, it is possible to draw on all these technologies to form some sort of defense. However, it is true that many people die of antibiotics a year and it will likely affect developing countries disproportionately. All in all, it is true that antibiotics resistance is a threat, but it's just not a GBCR.

Hi, To be honest I just stumbled across EA from a google search looking for suitable charities to donate a portion of money too concerning the locusts situation in the Horn of Africa. So I'll say its a very impressive forum you have here and well done all for taking part, its great to see personally.

As to the topic at hand as a recent open university mature student one of my projects was on antibiotic resistance in the environment - specifically wastewater concentrations. There is a big problem with antibiotics being used in animal farming and the use in humans leading to environmental accumulations. Human use is often not metabolised by the body and excreted in active form where antibiotic resistance may develop in water treatment plants (WWTP) and water treatment sinks. In general our 1950s style sewage treatment isn't very good at removing these, or other persistent pollutants as well.

One of the papers I found "Review of Antimicrobial Resistance in the environment and its Relevance to Environmental regulators", Singer et al from NERC, wallingford, UK gave a really excellent background. I was deeply impressed as well by Switzerlands plans to upgrade half their WWTPs. Much of how much environmental contamination contributes seems largely unknown - I remember its the above NERC paper that lists heavy metals and other locally occuring conditions as co-factors although there are a few others.

Anyway I'm a big out of my depth for now, I wish I'd found you guys earlier on in my life, but will be keeping an eye out on this as things progress in my life. I hope some of the above is helpful.