ABOUT THOSE SUPER-RESISTANT BACTERIA BUGS…
(…and how a long forgotten therapy might overcome them…)
A recent small news item about how over use of antibiotics, in places such as India, has created super-resistant bacteria bugs which now threatens the lives of newborn infants, the elderly, and otherwise healthy people, suffering from serious infections of one kind or another.
That news item triggered a vague recollection about an early bit of modern medical history…sending us browsing through musty old files of oddball data to look for and find something pertinent to the problem… the medical uses of ultra-violet light.
In the early years of the 1900’s, once electricity had been fully harnessed, and before such things as penicillin, sulfa drugs, and antibiotics, had become part of medical science’s kit bag of therapies…ultra-violet light was being used as a disinfectant and to combat infections of one kind or another. Even back in those less technologically advanced times it was relatively cheap and uncomplicated to use. So, our question now is this: can such a long forgotten therapy overcome these super-resistant bacteria bugs which our antibiotic practices have created for us?
Ultra-violet light has been around for almost one hundred years, and has been used both as a disinfectant and as a means of irradiating certain food items such as milk, fruit, and vegetables, to prevent their deterioration. How then could it be applied to prevent or fight infections which antibiotics are unable to do? We’re not medical experts but here’s an idea about it that may be worth exploring with some serious research:
-what if, a quantity of blood were taken from a person with a bacterial infection, passed through a process of ultra-violet irradiation; then, transfused back into that person’s system…what would be the effect on that person’s immune system’s ability to fight that infection?
-as we understand it, that “purified” by irradiation blood returned to a person’s system would be perceived by their immune system as a “foreign” substance, triggering a very strong response to fight against it. But, unable to find such a “foreign” element (since it’s the person’s own blood), it would just react against any remaining pathogens in their system to neutralize or eliminate these instead…regardless of their antibiotic resistant character.
That’s the gist of such a concept. Whether it is medically feasible or not we’ll have to leave to medical experts to determine, but, it is a very intriguing idea nevertheless. More importantly…could it be applied against –viruses- as well? If so, the benefits of ultra-violet light therapy would really be incalculable (such as HIV…Ebola…etc).
Well, all of that brings us to a bit of “Star Trek-ian” future time speculation about how that might become common medical practice by then. That is, much like getting an oil change for our cars, during our annual health examinations, we would be routinely hooked up to some sort of ultra-violet light irradiating machine (like dialysis) whereby our entire blood supply would be processed to neutralize or eliminate any accumulated pathogens of one kind or another, and then transfused right back into our system. Thus re-supplied with such “renewed” blood, our entire system would effectively be rejuvenated, giving us an extended lease…on life.This is pure speculation, no doubt, but, given the pace of today’s technological advances… it is not inconceivable.
On second thought, however, our planet is very overcrowded already so perhaps adding a bunch of long-living Methusalahs to the crowd could have some downside to such an idea.
Besides, as the lyrics from another musical put it (in Porgy and Bess)…Methusalah lived nine hundred years…but who calls that livin’…when no woman will give in…to no man what’s nine hundred years!
CENTURION