Frightening

I've been reading for a while now about staph infections that are resistant to most antibiotics. This is, of course, what scientists and health professionals have been predicting and worried about for years. An article appearing today reports on two other articles in JAMA dealing with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In one of the articles, the researchers concluded that antibiotic-resistant staph kills more people than AIDS in this country every year. That should be sobering news.

However, will anything be done about this problem? Due to the very nature of public health, this must be handled at the federal level, but the likelihood of that happening is nil. It would require stopping the profligate use of antibiotics in animal feed and it would require Republicans to be willing to acknowledge that the federal government has uses beyond conquering other countries and enriching their already-rich friends.

Also, it would require Repubs to actually believe scientists. For some reason, Republicans have decided that they know the natural world better than scientists and that "science" is some sort of leftist pursuit, full of alarmists and malcontents. This, of course, is why Republicans have scoffed at global warming, first asserting that it didn't exist, then asserting that humans didn't cause it, then asserting that it wouldn't be that bad, and finally asserting that there is nothing we can do about it. What amazes me is their ability to hold all four of those positions simultaneously. They also don't care for the Big Bang Theory and the age of the universe, which is why a Bush appointee at NASA worked so hard to scrub references to the universe being billions of years old from various PR stuff. The Republicans have worked hard to discredit EPA scientists as well, with Christine Todd Whitman leading the way after 9/11 insisting that the air around the WTC was perfectly safe (it was anything but). They've also tried to bring down the FDA to the level of politics. And, finally, you have the embarrassing belief among Repubs that intelligent design should be taught alongside or in place of evolution in the classroom. Among other Repubs, they just want creationism pure and simple.

It is, of course, no surprise to me or to anyone with a brain that so many scientists (particularly, those of a biological persuasion) have turned sharply left in their politics. Scientists realize that, if empirical evidence cannot convince someone, there is little left to do but vote against the person. And, of course, apologize to their international colleagues for Bush.