"The danger posed by growing resistance to antibiotics should be ranked along with terrorism on a list of threats to the nation, the government's chief medical officer for England has said." Also there is "a nagging concern among health officials who say the 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico could become a breeding ground for one of the hardest forms of TB to treat. Already, both California and Texas, as well as some states on the Mexico side of the border, have unusually high rates of drug-resistant TB." And just last week, health officials warned that [...]

"People diagnosed in January with 'totally drug-resistant TB' (TDR TB) have been independently retested at the National Tuberculosis Institute in Bangalore. The tests confirm that the bacteria resist all first and second-line drugs used to treat TB…" Even better: "Three of the first 12 patients have died, six are being treated and three have gone missing."

"Can India control drug-resistant tuberculosis?"

"HEALTH officials are paid to feel apprehensive. For some years they have feared that tuberculosis (TB), an ancient scourge tamed by modern drugs, might evolve into a new, indestructible state. New strains of mycobacterium tuberculosis have already emerged, some resistant to isoniazid and rifampicin, two of the best known treatments, and some resistant to additional injected drugs. The advent of completely resistant TB seemed inevitable. Now it may have arrived."

"But gonorrhea isn't the only bug that's outsmarting antibiotics. For example, certain strains of E. coli, a bacterium commonly linked to food-borne illnesses, have become resistant to common treatments. The World Health Organization has reported that 440,000 cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, a form of TB resistant to two key drug treatments, develop each year and cause at least 150,000 deaths. A rarer and more resistant TB strain, called extensively drug-resistant TB, has been found in 64 countries, according to the WHO, which notes the capacity of bugs to spread across the globe." —This article includes a guide on how to avoid drug-resistant bugs, but I think we all know [...]