Abuse of antibiotics causes fatal infections

To us moderns, who believe that there's a pill to cure what ails us, the current outbreak of antibiotic-resistant staph called MRSA by physicians is unnerving.

It's a potentially lifethreatening bacterial infection that's turning up in thousands of healthy people nationwide, with Texas a particular hotbed for the stuff.

"We seem to have lost control of it," says Shirley Shores, director of infection control at Parkland Hospital.

The New England Journal of Medicine recently reported that antibiotic-resistant staph, rare a decade ago, is now the most common skin infection treated in U.S. emergency rooms. In fact, the problem has become so severe that the British medical journal The Lancet last month declared that we're in a global "pandemic."

Staphylococcus aureus is so common as to be inescapable and is mostly harmless. But the new strains have developed immunity to most antibiotics and potentially can quickly kill those infected.

Last year, a 2-month-old Illinois girl grew so sick from it in a matter of hours that she had to be airlifted to a hospital, where she lingered for 11 days before dying.

This February, Kimberly Jackson of Fort Worth died of complications from a staph infection her family believes she acquired from a pedicure. Months of intravenous antibiotics did no good.

Those worst-case scenarios are not typical doctors have some high-powered antibiotics that can work but the cases do indicate how seriously this stuff should be taken.

Doctors cannot fight this alone. People must understand the risks and practice diligent hygiene, including frequent hand-washing and use of alcohol based sanitizing gels. Don't share towels.

Take special care in gyms and on playgrounds.

Any opening in the skin can be a potential entry point for MRSA. These infections, which resemble boils or spider bites, should be treated quickly.

Waiting could be fatal.

Why is this happening now?

A main cause is the use and abuse of antibiotics, which has sped up the natural evolutionary process through which staph has acquired immunity.

Parents who demand antibiotics for their children, doctors who are too eager to prescribe them, and patients who do not finish their entire course of antibiotics all have helped get us to this dangerous point.

Doctors are still mystified as to why some people become infected with MRSA and others don't.

But one thing is clear: There is no way to be entirely safe from MRSA and, for now, no magic bullet to destroy it.

Interior Department botches duty to public

In 1998 and 1999, U.S. Interior Department officials incompetently botched leases aimed at encouraging oil companies to venture into deeper waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

For years afterward, department officials kept mum about the mistake, which allowed oil companies to avoid paying fair royalties on assets owned by the taxpayers.

Compounding the error, senior officials of the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service inexplicably and improperly ordered a halt to audits and investigations that had turned up evidence that oil companies had shortchanged the government by $30 million dollars.

The original error on the leases has cost taxpayers an estimated $1.3 billion in royalties that high energy prices should have triggered.

However, as the companies invested hundreds of millions of dollars into deep-water exploration based on the absence of price triggers, there is little expectation that the Interior Department can recover what has been lost.

A deal is a deal.

However, that principle should apply in spades when oil companies do not scrupulously follow the terms of their government lease agreements and shortchange the taxpayers.

According to four lawsuits recently unsealed in Oklahoma City, Interior Department auditors allege that their superiors suppressed their efforts to recover millions in unpaid royalties due the government.

The New York Times reported that two auditors claim Shell Oil Co. inflated transportation costs to avoid paying $18 million in royalties. Another auditor states his bosses in Denver ordered him to drop his demand that several oil companies pay $1 million in back interest.

The Interior Department's most successful auditor, Bobby L. Maxwell, alleges in his whistleblower suit that Kerr- McGee sold oil to a marketing company at $12 million below market value, but received free services in that amount from the go-between. Maxwell, who had been given an award for stellar service by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, was fired.

Interior Department officials say the auditors should have followed proper procedure rather than suing their own agency. But the auditors had followed proper procedure, only to be thwarted by irresponsible superiors.

Department officials say Maxwell's claim is not warranted, but Louisiana state officials simultaneously reached the same conclusion as Maxwell and successfully pressed their claim on behalf of the state's taxpayers.

Maxwell, quoted in the Times, said, "The agency has lost its sense of mission, which is to protect American taxpayers. "

He would appear to be right. Offshore oil and gas deposits belong to the public. No government official has the right to give them away to private parties when those parties have agreed to pay for them. It's one thing to encourage risky deep-water exploration by lowering royalty payments; it is quite another to let oil companies get away with paying less than they owe.

The offshore industry has a history of paying less than it should, only to pay up when government auditors detected the error if it was, in fact, an error. Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney told the U.S. House last week that the department was rife with "managerial irresponsibility and lack of accountability."

Given those circumstances, the administration is adding fuel to the fire by reducing the number of auditors, including award-winning civil servants such as Maxwell, who had recovered hundreds of millions in unpaid royalties that went to build highways and pay for government services.

-- Houston Chronicle