{"id":2573,"date":"2012-04-22T17:39:43","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T22:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/realfoodhouston.com\/?p=2573"},"modified":"2012-04-22T17:39:43","modified_gmt":"2012-04-22T22:39:43","slug":"what-might-the-discovery-of-resistant-bacteria-in-a-4-million-year-old-cave-suggest-about-the-germ-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/2012\/04\/22\/what-might-the-discovery-of-resistant-bacteria-in-a-4-million-year-old-cave-suggest-about-the-germ-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"What might the discovery of resistant bacteria in a 4-million-year-old cave suggest about the Germ Theory?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lechuguilla<\/a>Bacteria resistant to antibiotics have been found in Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico.\u00a0 Yes, the cave, featured in the BBC presentation “Earth,”\u00a0is<\/em> beautiful, unusual, the deepest in the U.S., and the 7th longest explored cave in the world, but\u00a0the cave itself is not<\/em> why this story caught my eye.\u00a0 It’s the finding of resistant bacteria that could be millions, maybe billions, of years old.\u00a0 Most of these 93 ancient strains of bacteria showed resistance to natural antimicrobials and\/or to modern antibiotics.\u00a0 The team of researchers from McMaster University in Canada said that “antibiotic resistance is hard-wired into bacteria.”<\/p>\n

Why is this interesting?\u00a0 Primarily because it brings up questions about the nature of illness, bacteria,\u00a0antibiotic-resistance, and health.\u00a0 If bacterial resistance to\u00a0antibiotics is a natural occurrence, then maybe antibiotics aren’t the answer to\u00a0curing our illnesses.\u00a0\u00a0This discovery appears to support the Terrain theory<\/a>\u00a0of medicine, championed by Antoine B\u00e9<\/code>champ and Claude Bernard, rather than the Germ Theory<\/a>, the term applied to\u00a0the work of Louis Pasteur.\u00a0 Could it be that our ancestors didn’t need antibiotics because their Terrain<\/em> had not been damaged by breathing toxic air, drinking\u00a0contaminated water, and\u00a0eating dead and nutrient-deficient\u00a0food? After all, they not only survived,\u00a0their numbers increased exponentially long before antibiotics were developed, long before Louis Pasteur, vaccination, and pasteurization.<\/p>\n

Sources and references:<\/p>\n

Ancient cave home to resistant bacteria<\/a>
\nLouis Pasteur and the Myth of Pasteurization<\/a>
\nThe Lost History of Medicine<\/a>
\nGerm theory of disease<\/a>
\nLechuguilla Cave<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo credit: Lechuguilla Cave<\/a>, by Dave Bunnell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bacteria resistant to antibiotics have been found in Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico.\u00a0 Yes, the cave, featured in the BBC presentation “Earth,”\u00a0is beautiful, unusual, the deepest in the U.S., and the 7th longest explored cave in the world, but\u00a0the cave …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[169,80,9],"tags":[170,166,167,163,84,165,46,164,168],"class_list":["post-2573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antibiotics","category-health","category-traditional-food","tag-antibiotics-2","tag-bechamp","tag-bernard","tag-germ-theory","tag-health-2","tag-pasteur","tag-pasteurization","tag-the-terrain","tag-vaccination"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p70SEj-Fv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2573"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2606,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573\/revisions\/2606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}