Bugs and Super-bugs

Clearly I'm in the wrong line of business. If I were an entomologist, or bacteriologist I would be in heaven, and I don't even believe in heaven. It's been starting to rain again, and though I think it's quite early for the monsoon, I'm (mostly) not complaining because the rains bring much cooler temperatures, especially at night. Finally I can fall asleep before 5am, and sleep without sweating. Hallelujah! (Again, I'm not religious, but what is it that we secular types can say that carries the same feeling as "I'd be in heaven" or "hallelujah"?) Unfortunately the rain also brings bugs (and news of superbugs).

Anyway, I posted before about the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria, and the need for a paradigm shift in medicine towards developing pro-biotic treatments. Not just vague advice to "eat yogurt" (or in South India, curd rice - yummy), but a wide variety of healthy happy bacterial treatments to fight the good fight against the bad bacteria.

Curd Rice instead of antibiotics? Sound crazy? Maybe. Maybe not.

Photo Credit: Sulkha.com

The bad bacteria are getting worse, and getting stronger. There are now multiple reports on the identification of a new antibiotic resistant genetic strain called NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase). Aside from a zombie apocalypse, what could be worse than a pandemic outbreak of antibiotic-resistant necrotizing faciitis? (The wikipedia article on necrotizing faciitis has a photo of what this bacteria does to human tissue. If you really want to freak yourself out, check it out full size - but beware, it's really not for the faint of heart, or I would just insert it in the post.)

The problem with this, in case you hadn't noticed, is that NDM-1 is a gene, not a particular type of bacteria. It is currently identified in strains of E. coli, and pneumonia, but that's not all. The gene is highly adaptive in an environment in which antibiotics kill off the bacteria which lack that gene, and can be spread through horizontal gene transfer. In other words, there is strong selection pressure for this gene, and it is likely to spread.

Now let me again make the disclaimer that I am not a physician, or a medical expert of any kind, but it seems to me that the development of new adaptations at the level of genes that can spread across species of bacteria indicates that antibiotics, at least in the form we currently have them are not going to be the now-and-forever solution to illnesses in human populations.

I'm not a big fan of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (I'll save why for another post), but he is right that germs - and one might add, antibiotics - have shaped human history. And they may yet again, in unforeseen and unpleasant ways. Unless we start to think differently, radically differently, about how to combat bacterial disease. Maybe it's just the wishful thinking of a complete non-expert, but it seems as though bacteria have been fighting other bacteria for hundreds of thousands of years. Not only that but many beneficial bacteria exist inside the human body, co-evolved over those millennia, and now are necessary parts of a healthy human digestive system, etc. If bacteria fight other bacteria, and we can live with many different kinds of bacteria in our bodies at healthy, tolerable levels with no detrimental effects, then maybe we should use fire to fight fire? Just a suggestion.

Anyway, in addition to noticing the hubbub around superbugs, I thought I'd take this opportunity to also post a picture of my most recent bug discovery. It's some sort of centipede that I've never seen before.

Unidentified centipede. Red stripe. Fast walker. Suggestions anyone?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is not a holiday celebrated here in India, but in the spirit of the holiday, I did thank a lot of Indians.

For your holiday enjoyment some of turkeys I've seen lately:







Happy Turkey Day!!

A Village Visit

Yesterday I went to the village of Poondi, about 20 km from Thanjavur town. I went because my friend R., who is a Ph.D. student in the Tamil University here invited me to visit her and see her family home, and her village. I went and ate lunch with her and her mother, and we also took a walk around the whole village, 4 parallel main streets, about 3 blocks long. I have a lot of pictures, especially of the wildlife, and not so wildlife, of which I'll post some here and more on flickr.









This trip made me think of two important things: one, when someone starts telling me the story of their life's tragedy, especially a dead husband or father, or other close family member, I have no idea how to react, or why they're telling me their story.

The second thing is, everyone assumes I'm rich. And yes, in a way, simply by virtue of being American (or from any other "developed" country), one has more money, and general resources, including education and cultural capital with which to affect things. But I am a student, I have lived on a crappy graduate student stipend, or without employment, scraping by, for many years now. Even though the amount of money I make as a teaching assistant sounds like a lot in dollars, and even more converted into rupees, I always try to tell people how much things cost. How rent takes up a third to half of my salary, other basic costs, food, transportation, clothes, etc, take up most of the rest. I have a little expendable income for going out to the movies, or going out to dinner with friends, but only because I live very cheaply in everything else.

So when people look at me like I'm rich, and expect that I have infinite amounts of money to give away, it's difficult to convey that it's not really the case. And even though many Indians, even wealthy Indians don't give beggars money, they sometimes give me a dirty look, if I don't give a beggar change. Suddenly I'm the bad person, for not giving my spare change to someone begging. And I do give to beggars. Most recently, I literally didn't have any change. Other times, I've made a decision based on the number of beggars in a particular bus stand or other location. I was once in the unfortunate situation where I decided to give a small pack of biscuits to a child beggar of about 7 or 8 years old. I was in a bus stand, and that child produced 2 more, who also got biscuits, and they produced 4 more, and so on until a mob of shouting, pushing, reaching and grabbing children had surrounded me. Generosity is hard. And I believe more in supporting development programs, education, etc, than simply giving out food or a few rupees. It's that whole "teach a person to fish" thing.

So when my friend R's mother told me about how her husband died, my first thought was whether or not she was going to ask for money. I feel bad about that. I feel terrible, actually, but the issue of my "wealth" relative to others' misfortune is an issue that I face every single day. Anyway, I should have realized that money isn't the issue, since I've already hired R., who is a very smart young woman, to be my research assistant, to help me re-write bags and labels for artifacts, and enter data into spreadsheets, and a variety of other things. I already paid her, for her first weeks' earnings, and I'm sure I'll continue to have work for her for a while.

But if money isn't the reason why R's mother was telling me about her husband's death, and all the troubles that followed it, then I don't know what is. Is it sympathy? If so, I don't know if I'm expressing my sympathy in ways that are culturally appropriate, or even enough. Perhaps my exclamations of "Oh that's terrible" (in Tamil), and "Oh no, that is awful, I'm so sorry" should be more dramatic, more emphatic (as seen in Tamil soap operas)? I don't really know. I've spent a lot of time here in Tamil Nadu, in this culture, and there are still a lot of things I don't have figured out. This feels like an important one. I really should know how to respond appropriately, when someone tells me that a family member has died.

In any case, aside from what felt to me like an awkward moment, because I didn't know how to react to a widow telling me her difficulties, I had a wonderful time visiting the village. I should start asking friends who I know better, and who understand some of the cultural differences, about the appropriate way and level of response to these things.

As a final note, I realized a couple of the reasons I don't like to take and post pictures of ordinary city streets in Thanjavur and other cities... One it's so chaotic and densely filled with images, angles, lines, colors, that it's almost impossible to frame a good looking shot. Second, it is dirty, dusty, muddy, sometimes covered with garbage, and generally not very attractive. I guess my concept of photography is that it should show things that are aesthetically pleasing, and a lot of the really ordinary city streets, I don't find aesthetically pleasing... I should work on that though. Maybe this weekend I'll take a walk around town, and shoot a lot of pictures, just to see what comes out.

Wildlife and not-so-wild-life of Tamil Nadu

I've seen some amazing wildlife here in Tamil Nadu, and some other not-so-wild life. I decided one way to show "what India is like", is to show some of the life that I have seen.

Not so wild:

The puppy seems to belong to one of the stray dogs on the Tamil University campus. I haven't seen him with his mom, but he's been sleeping and hanging out by the front steps of the canteen where I eat lunch every day. Today, when I picked him up, he seemed to be healthy, if a bit scared and out of sorts. It was probably the first time he'd been picked up. People here in South India like dogs better than they do in the North, where they kick them hard, and throw rocks at them to go away. But they tend not to view them as something cuddly, that you'd actually pick up and pet and such. This was one cuddly and adorable puppy, and once he got used to it, he seemed to enjoy being held.

Wild:


The owl was just sitting on the ledge, during the daytime, at the university, and appeared to be resting/sleeping. It didn't pay much attention to me taking pictures, and I got pretty close to it. It has an amazing speckle to its belly, and I have no idea what kind of owl it is. But it's one of the neatest animal encounters I have had here yet.