The Living Medicine by Lina Zeldovich

Author:Lina Zeldovich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

8

The Rise of the Superbugs

In November 1956, doctors and nurses at the maternity ward of the Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey, were worried.1 An attractive modern facility designed to make the birthing process as easy as possible for mothers and infants, the hospital was battling a seemingly endless Staphylococcus aureus outbreak. The first signs of trouble appeared in 1955 when some mothers and babies developed skin infections. The nursery staff started washing their hands with hexachlorophene antibacterial soap and sterilizing linens in autoclaves. The incidence of infections dropped—only to increase a few months later, afflicting about 10 percent of infants and mothers. To make matters worse, the cases became much more severe, even life-threatening. By 1956, staph infections were causing pneumonia and breast abscesses.2 And they didn’t seem to respond to penicillin.

When two babies born at the Valley Hospital died of staphylococcal pneumonia in late 1956, the despairing staff started giving newborns a new antibiotic called erythromycin immediately after birth and for seven days. But some babies developed skin infections regardless. To the medics’ horror, they soon found erythromycin-resistant staphylococci even in babies who weren’t sick, confirming that the unkillable germ had taken a firm hold in the nursery.3

Similar outbreaks afflicted many hospitals across the United States at around the same time. In 1955, hospitals in Washington State struggled with S. aureus, which plagued their patients with pustules, skin rashes, and breast abscesses.4 One study found that out of 19,000 babies delivered in King County, 4,000 became severely ill, as did 1,300 women who gave birth. Jefferson Davis Hospital in Texas reported 16 newborn deaths, but a later investigation found that the outbreak was much larger—it infected 400 and killed 28 babies and 8 other children. In Manhattan, the New York Hospital was sending babies home only to readmit them shortly thereafter with abscesses and bone infections previously unheard of in infants.5 From California to Iowa to Pennsylvania, hospitals were battling the new staph, and they weren’t winning.

Exactly how this problematic strain arose wasn’t clear, but it became a formidable threat, covering some with skin boils and killing others with pneumonia or sepsis. Initially, it proliferated in maternity wards, but later encroached on other parts of the hospitals and eventually escaped outside health care institutions, spreading within communities.6 Penicillin, the miracle drug, wasn’t working, and even newer and stronger medications like erythromycin and tetracycline were failing. Doctors everywhere were alarmed. The threat of bacterial infections had been declared vanquished a decade earlier, but it was suddenly back with a vengeance.

Before this frightening development, the medical world had fallen in love with antibiotics. Scientists learned that these wonder drugs not only cured lethal infections but prevented them from occurring. Pharmaceutical companies began putting antibiotics into various non-medicinal products, from ointments and toothpaste, to chewing gum and even lipstick.7 Scientists discovered another astounding side effect of antibiotics’ power: they made farm animals grow faster.

Like many seminal scientific breakthroughs, this discovery happened almost entirely by accident. Inspired by the mold-isolated penicillin, American

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