Is a Devastating New Antimicrobial Resistant Superbug the Result of Bad Farming, Food and Pharma?

Photo by Drew Hays on Unsplash
By Dr Catriona Walsh

A new superbug has come to town

A new antimicrobial resistant superbug has suddenly appeared in multiple countries simultaneously over the past 15 years. The first report of the fungus, Candida auris, being isolated from a person’s ear was published in 2009. Now it is responsible for infectious outbreaks that can close intensive care wards. There is currently no known cure for many patients who are infected with it, due to its virulence, persistence and resistance to multiple antifungals. Conventional antifungals often don’t even tickle it. Many people carry it. People who are immunosuppressed and ill may have an almost 50% risk of dying when this particular organism is cultured from them. It is colonizing elderly care homes and neonatal units as well as hospitals. It is also in our communities. It makes MRSA look like child’s play, and it is on the rise.

Why has this new microbe only suddenly appeared in the last 10 years?

Why is this fungus popping up out of nowhere? We don’t know, but it is highly suspect that it is somehow related to some thing or things that we are doing to our environments.

Is it the indiscriminate and excessive use of fungicides, herbicides and pesticides on conventional crops that is allowing this superbug to thrive? 

We are killing most of the soil microbes through industrial agriculture. Even excessive industrial fertiliser use can massively alter our soil microbiome. Only the truly resistant will have a chance to survive our environmental apocalypse. 

Is it to do with our excessive use of antibiotics? 

We already overuse antibiotics in humans, but even worse is the overuse of antibiotics in factory animal farming. The demand for cheap boneless, skinless chicken breasts and cheap eggs permits awful, inhumane factory farms which pump their animals full of antibiotics and concentrated animal feeds full of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides, and then release the toxic effluent into the environment. 

Could it be something to do with the indiscriminate use of statins?

Statins are now widely recognised to have antimicrobial, but especially antifungal, activities. Statins alter our gut microbiomes, but they are also being found in the water, since they are passed out largely unaltered into our sewage, and continue to have antimicrobial activities even after they have been through the sewerage systems. The same water that is used to irrigate our crops, and returns to us after passing through water treatment plants. Our drinking water is contaminated with a dazzling array of medications.

How about the use of antimicrobial artificial sweeteners and preservatives?

Preservatives, artificial sweeteners and other food additives are increasingly added to our terrible ultra-processed and processed junk foods, which  can sit on a shelf for months or years without decomposing. What are those things doing to our microbiomes and our environments? This nutrient poor junk food is being actively pushed on consumers by governments and the food industry in the guise that they are healthy, sustainable and environmentally friendly. They are anything but! And we have also reached the stage where few of us can even recognise when a food is ultra-processed junk food. Sure, everyone can recognise that a MacDonald's is ultra-processed, but what about the new Impossible Burger, which boasts an impossibly long list of food extracts, industrial seed oils, isolated highly processed ingredients, and is very short on anything that you could call a whole, unprocessed, real food, unless you count the water and salt?

How about the impact of environmental pollution? 

All those heavy metals, dioxins and products of the petrochemical and mining industries are also altering our ecosystems. They are not just toxic to our own mammalian cells, but to friendly microbes that surround us everywhere in our environment.

How about the use of other drugs, from antidepressants to gadolinium based contrast agents? 

So many commonly used medications are incredibly toxic.

There is a consequence of messing up our microbial ecosystems

When we kill off some microbes, we must expect that other ones will step in to fill the void. “Nature abhors a vacuum” can apply to wiping out swathes of microbes as well. Human activities have already caused the spread of other multidrug resistant microbes.

While this is just the latest consequence in a long string of disastrous things we have been doing over the centuries to destroy our ecosystems, it certainly won’t be the last. Will we continue to shut our eyes and self-sabotage? What can we change to ensure that we don’t wipe ourselves off the planet through our own hubris?

What options are open to us to reduce the negative impact of our farming and food choices?

Plant-based diets are clearly not the answer to this problem. Nor are GMOs, industrial agriculture, or conventional dietary guidelines. Anyone who knows me, is one of my clients, or follows me will probably know where I stand on diet, medication usage, and the importance of trying to return more to nature in all areas of our lives.

As far as I can see our greatest hope is to use regenerative agriculture to produce both animal products and crops using as natural inputs as possible, getting rid of all synthetic inputs, while rebuilding soil. We also need a long overdue complete overhaul of our disastrous dietary guidelines to reverse these epidemics of metabolic syndrome, malnutrition, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, depression, etc. Keeping people out of hospitals and off medications as much as possible really should be a goal. And while we are talking about medications, we also need to re-evaluate trying to replace antibiotics with phage therapies (finding viruses that very specifically target bacteria). We will be in a post-antibiotic era far too soon. We need to train our doctors in functional medicine to get to the root cause of what is making people ill, instead of having drug companies training them to prescribe their medications to suppress specific symptoms. We need to make sure that everyone understands the microbiome, and what harms and helps it. 

What else can we do to turn around our trajectory towards annihilation? Or do you feel that we are so overpopulated now that we need some calamities to reduce the human population anyway?