Michele Clock email Re: her UnionTribune article

Michele Clock re: her UnionTribune article

Dear Michele Clock
Why was the article on the Creation 'science museum" in your newspaper?
Are you a person who believes in the message taught at the "museum?"
Did your editor tell you to because so many of the "little god" Christians who believe in a six thousand year old earth whined that the UT was not being fair unless their 'museum" was featured in your newspaper?

Is there any interest at UT in the view point of a science teacher who toured the "museum?"
In a person who a terrifying and life changing experience as a direct result of the national penetration of the Santee Creation “museum’s” teaching?

The viewpoint expressed at the museum is neither quaint nor harmless.

The effect of their attack on science has caused tens of thousands of deaths from antibiotic resistant bacterial strains and increasingly ferocious storms in the United States . Their philosophy has lead directly to the misuse of antibiotics by the livestock industry in the US and the failure of the United States regulatory agencies to take action against the abuse. Resistance bacterial strains have been documented over and over as the source of the resistance genes that have spread widely into every strain of pathogenic bacteria known to exist in the United States.

The little good young earth philosophy also believes that because God will create a new earth for Christians after Armageddon that there is no reason to worry about greenhouse gases or pollution (James Watt interior secretary under Reagan).

You or a loved one will be adversely affected by these two problems within five years.

Every American will be in the same boat. Either one of our loved ones or we ourselves will die from an untreatable bacterial infection or live disfigured. The only treatment will be a massive removal of tissue--arm, leg, half a face etc hence the disfigurement in the survivors.

In Europe, where the voting public has not been exposed to the “little god” and “young earth” propaganda, the general population accepts the principles of evolution. Societies there act on those principles. Government agencies act on evolutionary principles. Lives are saved in Europe that are lost in the United States.

In Holland less than 2% of the population is positive for MRSA in their nasal cavities. In California it is more than 50%.

MRSA is an antibiotic resistant Staph bacterial strain. Staph is a potentially pathogenic strain of bacteria that live harmlessly in the mucous membranes of our noses throats and lungs. Only when the flu or other primary pathogen temporarily cripples the natural defenses in the mucous membranes are the staph bacteria free to grow.

If they can grow long enough to form a bacterial film or plaque especially in the lungs, then the infection will be fatal without an antibiotic. People who have allergies, asthma or have had bronchitis or pneumonia are the most susceptible. (Science Daily-“Bacteria Infections Can Cause Necrotizing Pneumonia”)

In the antibiotic era of ten or twenty years ago when a person having the flu suddenly became much worse with a temperature spike caused by a secondary infection, antibiotics were given and the bacteria were stopped.

Today penicillin and many other antibiotics are useless. The most dangerous strain because it is the most resistant and also grows the fastest (most virulent) is CA-MRSA. CA stands for California where it was first detected and is the most widespread. You can acquire it by breathing in droplets of spittle from an asymptomatic carrier who is talking to you. You won't know you have it until you get a flu that results in a secondary infection. More than half the people you know at work, at the store and at church are carriers right now! Read last week’s North County Times article about the San Marcos student who is near death from the flu followed by a secondary staph infection. Then be afraid, very afraid because in today’s little god creationist controlled federal agencies, regulators who should protect us don’t. Being afraid is very appropriate.

I am a survivor of an antibiotic resistant staph infection of the left eye. Last year I went to the ophthalmologist for flashing lights in my eye ( was told it was anormal part of aging) and came back with a virulent pink eye infection.

You cannot imagine the horror of observing no effect from my very careful six times daily use of the standard treatment for eye infections-- gentamycin eye drops. I might as well have been putting in drops of water. My eye did not get better. It got worse. It not only stayed red and swollen but the bacteria spread through the tear gland into my nose.

I started bleeding from the left nostril. I had never had a bloody nose in 52 years of life. The bacteria were eating a hole inside my nose! EVEN with antibiotic drops six times daily! Then an ulcer started forming in my left cornea.

I called the eye doctor whose unhygienic assistant had given the infection to me. (She did not wash her hands. She did not clean the equipment that touched my cornea to check pressure, and she handed me a wadded up Kleenex from her unwashed un-gloved hand to wipe the tears caused by the eye drop she put in. Within six hours of the appointment I had a royal case of pink eye.) After a second appointment, the unsympathetic ophthalmologist gave me a different antibiotic which I tried. The new one slowed down the bacteria but did not kill it.

I called and got an emergency appointment with my personal doctor who gave me a third antibiotic that finally killed it after nearly two weeks of daily treatments.

But I was shocked to learn that had the bacteria been resistant to the kind of antibiotic my doctor had given me that there were no other antibiotics that could have a chance of killing it except intravenous vancomycin.

I thought there were thousands of kinds of antibiotics. But no, it turns out there are really only about six kinds. The thousands listed in the Physician Desk Reference are really just hundreds of tiny variations of those same six. These tiny variations allow for new patents and new profits but do not have any additional affect on resistant bacteria.

It seems that if a bacteria strain is resistant to one kind of antibiotic, it is resistant to the hundreds of variations of that antibiotic as well. Pharmaceutical companies haven't turned out a truly novel antibiotic in years.

Antibiotic resistance is real. It is damn scary. It is like having a cancer that eats your body in hours rather than months. It seemed like millions of tiny invisible tigers were eating my eye and nose.

The creation "science" that you featured in your article is a deadly threat to everyone. I found that out first hand. Unless our benign view of this dangerous philosophy changes we and our loved ones are at huge risk. This creation science risk is real and is here now. Resistant bacteria can be prevented from occurring if evolutionary principles are used. They can be controlled and limited once they occur if regulatory agencies invoke standard practices of containment.

Antibiotic resistant bacteria are just the most pressing reason to stop treating little god young earth creationism with kid gloves. The massive climate shifts caused by the incredible amount of extra energy in the atmosphere due great influx of carbon dioxide that has been sequestered as fossil coal and oil for 200 million years will get many of the survivors of the resistant bacterial plaques to come in the next few years. (Google XDR-TB South Africa or “Salmonella Survives better in Stomach due to altered DNA”—it not only survives better it is resistant to five of the six major varieties of antibiotics and its on more than 80% of the chicken and turkey in the supermarket and can be cultured from the outside of most packaged foods in aisles nearby to the meat counter--transferred by the touch of shoppers and stockers.)

You uncritical article helps to promote a deadly dangerous philosophy.

Sincerely, Darwindad

PS I called many people at the county public health office. I thought perhaps if they received a report of an antibiotic resistant staph infection in an Encinitas ophthalmologist’s office, people from county health would immediately go out there and check it out. I certainly expected that someone would swab and culture for CA-MRSA. The collection procedure is fast. The culture material and process is standard and cheap.

If my report were confirmed, I felt certain that county health officers would insist on decontamination procedures for the ophthalmologist’s office and training of the office staff in more hygienic procedures. I mean anyone would expect that at minimum, right?

I was shocked to find out there is not a single person in this county who has any duty whatsoever to monitor or contain resistant bacteria in this county. There was no interest at county public health or any or of a dozen or so county offices I called.

The ophthalmologist did not even care. He claimed I must have gotten the infection elsewhere and was not going to take any new protections for patients or training of his assistants. In over fifty years of life that was the first pink eye infection I had ever had. It manifested within hours of my visit. That was the only public place I visited that day. The infection was extremely aggressive and resistant.

Wouldn’t you think he would want to institute some cautionary procedures just because I had been there and “brought the pink eye with me”? No he was not interested. It had nothing to do with him or is office.

When I went back in the second time to get another antibiotic, he personally was extremely careful about wearing gloves, using a disposable wooden stick to move my eye lid and washing with antibiotic soap AFTER he examined me. He looked at my eye from as far away as possible. He seemed to believe in antibiotic resistant bacteria as a threat to himself, but was unconcerned about his patients.