Before the days of antibiotics and before the days of over-zealous christian nurses, the elderly woman who was beginning to go a bit ga-ga and crumbly, fell, broke her hip and got lots of painkillers. Then she got pneumonia, due to too much inactivity lying on her back with suppressed respiration from the pain killers and - bobs-your-uncle, died a relatively pleasant death.
The men died years before of lung cancer, heart attacks and strokes.
Then medicine improved, many less men died early and no-one, postoperatively, was allowed to lie around, zonked out on pain relief. Any hint of an infection and antibiotics were given, whether the poor patient was 'away with the fairies' or not.
No wonder there is now such a problem with too many old people, especially too many old people with dementia. No-one is allowed to die
So perhaps this news about antibiotics is good in a very tiny way.
However - for those who are not geriatric it is terrifying. According to the Chief Medical Officer of Health for the UK -
"The threat due to the rise in Drug Resistant infection is comparable to the threat of Global warming"
She thinks that we may never see the effects of global warming because (she implies) we will already have been wiped out by infections we can do nothing about.
Now - That is really frightening and not far away - 20 years!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21178718
No comments:
Post a Comment