“To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering”--Aldo Leopold................Never a truer statement made as it relates to the human community finding new and better ways to fight bacterial infections through the use of Antibiotics............We all are aware that through overuse on the common cold as well as well as on livestock(to fatten them up), the current suite of antibiotics available to fight infections is starting to become ineffective...........Now, Researchers are reporting that a new drug, extracted from a soil sample, easily cured infections in mice, with no side effects...... Dr. David A. Relman, a professor of medicine at Stanford writes that “It illustrates the amazing wealth and diversity of as-yet-unrecognized, potent, biologically active compounds made by the microbial world — some of which may have real clinical value"...............“We’ve been blind to the vast majority of them because of the biased and insensitive methods we use to discover drugs”........... "The methods are flawed because they miss microbes that will not grow in the lab(only occur naturally in the environment), and subject others to artificial conditions that may alter the array of potential drugs they produce".............."The new research is based on the premise that everything on earth — plants, soil, people, animals — is teeming with microbes that compete fiercely to survive......... Trying to keep one another in check, the microbes secrete biological weapons: antibiotics........ The way bacteria multiply, if there weren’t natural mechanisms to limit their growth, they would have covered the planet and eaten us all eons ago",.................Therefore, abiding by Leopold's premise of keeping every cog and wheel" in our environment from extinction is irrefutable and should be our goal as a society

Sent by rick.meril@gmail.com: New Antibiotic Stirs  Hope Against  Resistant Bacteria click on above title  to read full article By DENISE GRADY A previously uncultured  bacterium, Eleftheria terrae,  makes teixobactin, a new  antibiotic.CreditWilliam Fowle/ Northeastern University