On, MSNBC last night they said that the anthrax that was sent through the mails was not antibiotic resistant at all, and that almost all antibiotics were effective, naming penicillin as being one of them. They talked like there was no advantage to Cipro over penicillin.
That bit of information threw a loop in my assumption that Bayer was behind it. Since the mailings originated where many of the big pharms are located and the stuff was highly refined, it seemed pretty obvious to me that it came from one of our pharms. Since the news was always saying to take a very expensive antibiotic from Bayer, I used the "follow the money" trick that works almost all the time and figured that Bayer was responsible. But it it were Bayer, they would surely have used a strain that did not respond to cheap antibiotics. So I am not wondering again who might be responsible. Marshall [email protected] wrote: > "We have just received----what we regard as reliable"information that > plain Penicillin 'G'......is 95% as effective as Cipro for the early > control of Anthrax." > > Brooks: I found the following on Quackwatch: Roger > > There have been no clinical trials of Cipro (ciprofloxacin) to treat > or > prevent anthrax (at least not ones which meet the ethical standards of > > medical journals. > > It looks as if the US Army chose ciprofloxacin on the grounds that: > i. It achieves good tissue levels, many times over the levels > needed to > kill the bacterium. > ii. It is believed that the Soviet weapons program produced a > strain of > Bacillus anthracis (the bacterium which causes anthrax) resistant to > penicillin and tetracycline, which would otherwise be considered the > drugs > of choice for wild type anthrax. > iii. ciprofloxacin can be given in a simple dosage schedule, and is > a > drug which is also usable for other possible bioterror agents such as > plague > and tularaemia. Therefore people in the field are not required to > think > (always a good idea!) > > Since there is no indication that the anthrax used in the recent spate > of > letter attacks is anything other than a fully susceptible strain, > penicillin, tetracycine (or, better, oxycycline) would be acceptable. > The > most important thing to remember is that cephalosporins DO NOT have > activity > against anthrax. > > If using a quinolone, of which ciprofloxacin is one, I personally > would > favour gatifloxacin or moxifloxacin over ciprofloxacin on theoretical > grounds. Again, no clinical trials! -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: [email protected] -or- [email protected] with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the SUBJECT line. To post, address your message to: [email protected] Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
