A Defining Moment Approaches - The End Of Antibiotics
By Matthew Ward January 27, 2016 Share this article:
Modern medicine as we all know it, is about to come to an end.
There are some potential future scenarios that are just too dreadful to
contemplate; things that have the potential to change the world for
ever. Some nightmare scenarios have the ability to touch us all
personally. There is one such event, guaranteed to occur in the coming
years, which will affect each and every single person in the world
directly.
The end of antibiotics; the point when the effectiveness
of antibiotics to resistant bacteria comes to an end. Many medical
experts even go so far as to say that this will be the end of modern
medicine as we know it and it will become a reality in the next decade,
at the very latest.
At some indefinable point
in the next few years, the effectiveness of antibiotics to infection is
going to end. The impact this will have upon humanity is indescribable.
It will not happen all of a sudden, but will at first be incremental.
It
is happening right now. It will catch most completely by surprise until
one day we all wake-up and people we know are dying of conditions once
thought trivial. This one event will rock the Western world as much as
any major war could and will have longer lasting repercussions.
The
end of antibiotics is a world defining event of unimaginable importance
and will push elements of health care, especially infection control,
back to pre-industrial levels of civilization. Aspects of modern
medicine will travel back in time to the year 1700.
The
World Health Organization has warned that "...many common infections
will no longer have a cure and, once again, could kill unabated." The
U.S. Centers of Disease Control has pointed to the emergence of
"nightmare bacteria." The chief medical officer for England, Prof. Dame
Sally Davies has evoked parallels with the "apocalypse."
That this will happen is a one hundred percent certainty. This will definitely happen, there is no equivocation any more.
Colistin,
an antibiotic usually thought of as a "last resort" is now failing as
bacteria become widely resistant to it. This resistance has been found
in both humans and animals. This means that bacteria like MRSA and other
superbugs are going to become more common and more difficult to treat
in the near future.
Today most MRSA or
superbugs are confined to hospitals, soon they will be found in the
community. Many will die because of this and there will simply be no
available medical recourse for dealing with the infections these
bacteria cause.
A post-antibiotic world will
almost certainly mean the end of all forms of cancer treatment.
Chemotherapy and radiotherapy, two of the most common treatments for
cancers, both cause huge damage to patients' immune systems, our body s
own defenses against infection.
Dr. Luke Moore,
a cancer specialist at Imperial College, London, sums the issue up
succinctly, "At the moment we can fight those infections with
antibiotics, until the immune system is working again, but the cupboard
is getting barer. It s harder to find drugs that will fight those
inevitable infections."
With the effectiveness
of antibiotics severely limited, almost nobody would survive. Cancer
treatment, as we know it, would shortly come to an end.
Lifesaving
transplant operations will come to an end in a post-antibiotic
environment for the same reasons that cancer treatments will. It simply
will not be possible to suppress an individual s immune system to the
point necessary to make transplants a viable process. Patients will die
in the process of enabling the host body to accept the transplanted
organ.
Routine surgery will become too
dangerous to carry out. Invasive surgery, where a doctor or health
professional opens up the skin was once the most dangerous medical
treatment available because of the infection that inevitably followed.
Surgery used to be seen as a last resort. In a post-antibiotic world
having any kind of invasive operation will once again became a highly
dangerous game of risk.
Terrifyingly, the
effective end of antibiotics will result in a massive surge in deaths
during childbirth. Both of my own young children and my wife would be
dead today if it were not for the lifesaving medicines and antibiotics
given post birth. For the entirety of human history, being pregnant was
the single most dangerous time in any women s life. Appallingly, this
will become the norm again, in a post antibiotic world.
The implications will even impact upon dentistry. How can
you have a troublesome and painful tooth pulled if there are then no
antibiotics afterwards to ensure no post op infections?
The
fast approaching end of antibiotics will ripe from the hands of doctors
one of their most powerful tools. A simple cut on the end of your
finger could result in the end of your life and luck will determine your
survival much more than a physician s skill or experience.
There
are clear Biblical implications for this approaching antibiotic
apocalypse. In Matthew 24, Jesus gives his disciples a break down
summary of events indicating the end of the age. A part of that summary
includes details related to an increase in famines and "pestilences."
Pestilences,
also described as plagues or epidemics, will increase significantly as
the end of the age approaches. This is exactly what is going to happen
as the effectiveness of antibiotics comes to an end.
"...And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places (Matthew 24:7).
Throughout
the twentieth century humanity has managed to steadily bring
pestilences under control. This is about to be reversed. This very real
specter of widespread disease epidemics becoming a reality is yet
another indicator of our close proximity to the Tribulation period.
I
used to believe that the Biblical pestilences described as occurring
during the Tribulation period would be the likes of Ebola, Smallpox or
some other equally horrific virus. The reality is they may well simply
be a variant of the common cold run rampant.
Once again, the shadow cast by the Tribulation period falls over our own collective horizons. Time is short.
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