Right On Track

Our largest ever THANK YOU goes out to all of you forsupporting this project.

"A report by WHO - its first to look at antimicrobialresistance, including antibiotic resistance, globally - reveals that thisserious threat is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening rightnow in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of anyage, in any country. Antibiotic resistance - when bacteria change soantibiotics no longer work in people who need them to treat infections - is amajor threat to global public health." "... the world is headed for apost-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries, which havebeen treatable for decades, can once again kill.”

We have worked in the field of antimicrobial-resistantinfections for decades, and have seen the situation worsen through time,including in the seemingly most advanced nations in the world, yet we continueto rely upon conventional approaches to the discovery and development of newantimicrobial agents, albeit with minimal success.

The greatest advances in infection control have been with'prevention' through sanitation, and even more so recently with the earlierdetermination of the virulence and resistance mechanisms of a specificinfectious agent, and even with the identification of the actual infectiousagent (if you can believe that), all of which are essential to infectioncontrol.

However, as with so many other technology-driven approaches,it will be the creativity and innovation surrounding the discovery of newmechanisms of action of novel antimicrobials from nature that are activeagainst new and emerging resistance mechanisms in infectious agents that willlikely show the way.

Our investigations of these very unusual forest mushroomsthat are toxin-tolerant represent a new path to discovery. It is a long trekfrom here to there, but chasing the clues we uncover in our toxin-strewnforests may be a more likely path to success than is being followed by othersat present.

Curious even more is that we have forced the sewagetreatment facilities to spend millions of dollars now to 'enhance' thetreatment processes, and to eliminate thousands of acres of forests as sludgedumping grounds, but as you can imagine, the resulting 'new generation' sewagesludge is now much more toxic than ever before; this new sewage sludge productof the 'enhanced' treatment process that is now being disposed in our forestsand on our farms and rangelands is now more toxic than ever, so we have newforest fungi to investigate (I have already identified some).

If Bad can be of Benefit, this is that odd situation. Worsequality sewage sludge may be revealing forest fungi that are even moreinventive, if that is the right term for what they do in nature.

One very important example is as follows: "Resistanceto the treatment-of-last-resort for life-threatening infections (carbapenemantibiotics) caused by a common intestinal bacteria, Klebsiella pneumonia hasspread to all regions of the world. K. pneumoniae is a major cause ofhospital-acquired infections, such as pneumonia, bloodstream infections,infections in newborns and in intensive-care unit patients. In some countries,because of resistance, carbapenem antibiotics would not work in more than halfof people treated for K. pneumoniae infections."

Therefore, all that we can do to get to the next step insaving lives from infections is worth the cost and time; this disaster impactsus all.

Few people who get cancer, for example, ever die from theircancer; they die from infections incited by the chemotherapy and radiationtherapy that suppress their natural immunity to infectious agents. Therefore,new and novel antimicrobial agents are in serious demand.

Most people who die actually die from infections, not frominjuries or diseases, and that little-known fact holds true worldwide.Infections kill more people than all of the scary space objects, terrorists,chronic diseases, famines, floods, wars, volcanos, earthquakes and morecombined (so says the CIA, CBO, WHO and others), yet all that I just mentionedgets most of the financial attention - we have work to do!

Thank you, Richard

 

Some of the micro-mushrooms we see in the sludged forests are smaller varieties than those seen previously. In this older sludge area, about 17 months since the sludge was disposed in this forest, the mini-shrooms are emerging amongst the revived mosses on the forest floor.

 

In most cases, the caps are about 1 - 2 mm in diameter. This specimen is emerging along with a toxin-tolerant blackberry seedling, an excellent toxicity remediation plant.

 

Nearly too small to image in the darkness under a rotted log.

 

Or from the top of a log, with a yet smaller edition to its left.

 

Or from the side of a buried log.

 

Or from the forest floor.

 

And yet even smaller.

 

Including the smallest Bird's Nest Fungus. What pharmaceutical treasures or secrets do they hold?