Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA Book

As a retired Clinical and Public Health Microbiologist, I can say that this writer knows the subject. So I can recommend this book. But the reader should be warned, this book is quite technical and very detailed, and really very disturbing. In this busy world, I think some important facts about MRSA and other "superbugs" can get lost in the detail. What facts? Well MRSA is not just a problem of sick people getting infected in hospitals, which was the case 15 years ago when I left the hospital lab. Today MRSA can be acquired by healthy people in the outside community. So MRSA is a problem of the whole community, not just the sick community. It has grown into a Public Health problem, and Public Health departments are being cut right and left. Another fact: Pharmaceutical companies are not looking for newer antimicrobials to use against MRSA or other superbugs that will pop up. Why not? No profit: Antimicrobials need to be used sparingly, and newer ones need to be kept in reserve, so there is no profit for developing new and better bullets to use against these threats. This author does a good job describing this situation and I think she is one of our finest journalists in the field of infectious disease. But I am less hopeful about the future of healthcare in my country after reading the book than I was before reading it. Despite so-called "reforms" the fact of life is that miracle-cures don't remain effective for long. This book shows how resistance to penicillin occurred soon after that miracle drug was developed, and methicillin-resistance followed soon later. Now we have vancomycin-resistance, etc. On and on. So don't depend on miracles for your healthcare. Act preventively. Handwashing helps. Staying out of crowds helps even more. Staying out of the hospital is really the biggest thing you can do to keep your health as long as possible, but sooner or later most of us will get sick and end up in the hospital. That is a fact of life. Hospital stays will increase. So will superbug infections. I Highly recommend this disturbing book!