Town surrounded by pig farms gripped by superbug MRSA - 27 Oct 2009  
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A few years ago, Thomas Anderson, MD, a country doctor in Camden, Indiana, began seeing a large number of people with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a flesh-eating antibiotic resistant bacteria. Dr. Anderson himself and three of four of his children also became victims of the MRSA epidemic. His wife and teacher, Mrs. Cindi Anderson, described the incurable MRSA in a telephone interview with Supreme Master Television.

(Phone interview in English)

Cindi Anderson – Wife of late physician who treated MRSA epidemic (F): Some people will get, like my daughter, a rash all over her leg. Then another, then it will usually come to head in several different spots, and they will have a boil, a huge very painful boil and the skin will get red and swollen maybe up to six inches across.  Sometimes the boils are so deep that there’s actually a hole there for a while. It’s very, very painful, and people are miserable when they have it, and even though the boil may go away, once you have it, it will come back.

VOICE: Dr. Anderson suspected the prevalence of MRSA may be related to the pig farms in and around his county, including many industrial pig farms. Such factory farms have been identified by many health experts as breeding grounds for antibiotic resistant bugs like MRSA, due to their regular abuse of antibiotics as a feed additive promoting weight gain.

Sadly, Dr. Anderson, who was known to make space in his own home for patients who could not afford a hospital, passed away before he continued his investigation of the pig farm implication. If he had lived, he might have read about the studies conducted in Denmark, the Netherlands and the US which have found high infection rates of a newly identified MRSA strain, both in pigs and nearby humans such as pig farmers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), MRSA kills more people in the US each year than AIDS.

Cindi Anderson (F): There have been so many cases.  I am not sure I had one student out of sixty that hasn’t had MRSA or knows of somebody that had confirmed that had MRSA.

VOICE: Tragically, industrial scale pig farms are the source not only of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but also of new influenza viruses, such as the currently prevalent swine flu. New flu deaths in Hong Kong and Turkey were most recently added to the official global tally which now stands at 5,850 fatalities. In the US, deaths have exceeded 1,004, with President Barack Obama declaring swine flu a national emergency to help facilitate patient care. Hospitals across the country will be allowed to transfer people to alternative facilities such as schools and nursing homes if they become overwhelmed with a massive influx of patients. Worldwide, swine flu is believed to have infected tens if not hundreds of millions, and is spreading far too fast to record most cases.

We thank Mrs. Anderson for sharing her town’s experience, and send our sympathies to her family as one of so many who have lost loved ones due to such livestock-related illnesses. May we soon come to terms with the far-reaching public health risks of animal agriculture and shift our societies to the holistic, plant-based diet. 

Reference
http://www.carrollcountycomet.com/news/2006-07-26/local_News/063.html
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=31810870 http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/01/mrsa_in_pigs_and_pig_farmers.php http://abcnews.go.com/Health/SwineFluNews/h1n1-swine-flu-emergency/story?id=8913231
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarticle.asp?xfile=data/international/2009/October/international_October1628.xml§ion=international&col=
http://www.spa.gov.sa/English/details.php?id=712231
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/24/obama-declares-hn-flu-national-emergency/
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-10/24/content_12316804.htm