"Apocalypse Pig: The Last Antibiotic Begins to Fail"

"On Thursday, researchers from several Chinese, British and US universities announced in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases that they have identified a new form of resistance, to the very last-ditch drug colistin—and that it is present in both meat animals and people, probably comes from agricultural use of that drug, can move easily among bacteria, and may already be spreading across borders.

This is very bad news...

The bacteria possessing this resistance were not, as sometimes happens, merely gut bacteria that had acquired the necessary DNA but were hanging out quietly in the intestines and not causing trouble. They are already causing human infections.

And, of most concern: The MCR-1 gene that creates this resistance is contained on a plasmid, a small piece of DNA that is not part of a bacteria’s chromosome. Plasmids move freely around the bacterial world, hopping from one bacterium to another; in the past, they have transported resistance DNA between bacterial species, facilitating resistance’s rapid movement around the globe. This gene, the authors predict, will be able to do that as well."

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/21/mcr-gene-colistin/

With antibiotics resistance news, I feel like there are lessons to be learned from climate change communication. This makes me feel helpless in a way that drains me and makes me want to ignore this information.

Related: the semi-alarmist one