Totally Drug Resistant Tuberculosis

I just loved reading this after having watched the movie Contagion with Aimee last night.

Physicians in India have identified a form of incurable tuberculosis there, raising further concerns over increasing drug resistance to the disease¹. Although reports call this latest form a “new entity”, researchers suggest that it is instead another development in a long-standing problem.

The discovery makes India the third country in which a completely drug-resistant form of the disease has emerged, following cases documented in Italy in 2007² and Iran in 2009³.

Iran makes sense, but Italy?

Part of the increase in drug resistance is related to complications that arise in treating patients who are also infected with HIV — 13% of TB cases, according to the WHO. However, the greatest part of the problem results from the management of the disease.

.... 

“The cases are a story of mismanagement,” says Migliori. “Resistance is man-made, caused by exposure to the wrong treatment, the wrong regimen, the wrong treatment duration.”

....

The fact that no new first-line TB drugs have been developed for half a century has probably contributed to the emergence of strains that are unresponsive to treatment, says Mitnick. “If you keep using the same drugs for that long, resistance is inevitable.” 

Boy, that socialized medicine just keeps looking better and better, doesn't it?

EDIT: It's sad that I have to do this, but such is the state of things today.  I'm not against antibiotics, antivirals or drugs in general.  I'm not even against pharmaceutical companies, though that is very much in vogue.  As the Nature article states, however, even good things, like life-saving drugs, have to be used competently to function properly.  Furthermore, governments around the world keep making it more difficult and more expensive to develop new drugs.  The result is that pharmaceutical companies develop fewer drugs and bacteria and viruses inevitably become resistant to existing drugs.

Finally, I'm skeptical of conspiracy theories.  I firmly believe that one should not ascribe to malice what can be easily ascribed to incompetence.