I think I was 12 years old the first time it dawned on me what “kills 99.9% of all germs means.”
I was spraying a can of “disinfectant” around, per my mom’s instructions, because the basement had flooded, flood handled but now things might be growing in the damp cinder blocks. A mindless activity gives me time to think about stuff and I suddenly realized that 99.9% leaves 0.1%… the ones that don’t mind the “disinfectant.” Super Germ.
Suddenly I was horrified. Suddenly I didn’t want to get near any of the places I’d sprayed. The stuff in my hand was creating pockets of the most hardy and stubborn of whatever might (or might not) have been there.
Yuck!
Double yuck!
Ok… a 12 year old’s understanding. Here’s the problem though; my adult understanding informs me that it’s even worse than that. Alright, the spot I had just sprayed (back then, I never use such products any more) isn’t toxic (except that I just sprayed it with something claiming to kill 99.9% of anything that was alive there), probably not any more virulent than it was a moment ago. Here’s the problem: we’ve been doing this for decades now, nigh on a 150 years that we’ve been fighting germs.(1) Over and over again we kill off the most vulnerable of the herd and leave the stubborn 0.1%. “Conan the Germ.”
The really scary part? This applies also to the improper use of antibiotics, as well as cleansers of all sorts. Every package that says “kills 99.9%.” Every time some doctor issues antibiotics for a cold (antibiotics having no effect on a cold, can not have), he’s helping “germs” to evolve into something never seen before. So-called prophylactic use of antibiotics is every bit as bad, maybe even worse.(2) Every time some consumer fails to take the full course of the antibiotics he was given, stops taking them the moment he “feels better,” he is also contributing to the evolution of Conan the Germ.
There’s even a product or two now that advertise “kills 99.99%” of germs. That means the last 0.01% is even tougher yet, even more boisterous, obstreperous and enthusiastic. Smaller population, yes, but watch out! They won’t stay a small population for long.
So, we now have strains fungus in hospitals that sometimes can not be killed; the infected portions of wall or tile can only be removed and replaced. We have the “flesh eating bacteria” that can not be killed, only cut away (removed, but not replaced, unfortunately). “Antibiotic resistant strains” of a great many Old diseases have shown up in recent decades. This is why. This is exactly why.
We do not need stronger disinfectants. That way lies madness. What we need is better education about the proper and limited use of such. As for antibiotics, we may have created a very serious problem here: the medical industry created these new super-bugs by the use of the very antibiotics that have given us marvelous treatments for things that used to kill, but in the long run, the Germs will not be denied. We need to learn to live with them symbiotically; we need to learn to build up our immune systems(3). We need to reserve antibiotics for extreme use only. Oh well…
Sometimes I imagine a future cartoon or snippet in some Galactic Newspaper (somewhere in the “outlying provinces” news section). A tombstone resting on the planet Earth, large, in proportion to the planet, sticking up above the atmosphere. On it inscribed: “Here lies the Human Race: killed 99.9% of all Germs.”
(1) “Germs” is a bad word, as I’ve noted in other postings. It lumps in the Good with the Bad [and probably the Ugly as well], and it’s also a mysterious term, most people having no real grasp of what bacteria, viruses, prions, amoebae, fungus, etc, etc are, so simply calling them “germs” can lead to “magical thinking,” of which there is way too, too much already. Still, it’s also a handy term, and a place to start. But what we are talking about for the most part is bacteria, without which life as we know would not even be possible. Bacteria are your friends, by and large. By the way, Louis Pasteur introduced the germ theory of disease in 1861. It didn’t catch on among doctors (in America, at least) for quite a while after that, even into the 1910’s washing one’s hands just didn’t seem that important. Just sayin’.
(2) Prophylactic use of antibiotics, such as before getting your teeth cleaned, with out first checking for existing infections in the client can actually make an existing, but unknown, infection worse, much much worse, by doing exactly what the spray disinfectant does: kill off the weaker members, rouse up the militant members of the infection. Not every case, certainly, but it is still indiscriminate use of antibiotics, and that must be avoided at all costs. That includes “antibiotic hand soap;” horrible idea that was. Completely destroy the natural ecology of the hands, making you vulnerable to everything you touch? Who failed to think this one through? For doctors, sure, use it; for the general public? Are you insane?
(3) Immune systems: which antibiotics tend to weaken, by destroying the symbiotic bacteria as well as any infection, and also by not giving the immune system the chance to kill it off on its own — immune systems learn how to fight things; antibiotics deny the chance to learn.