I cannot see why this relatively poor generation should bear the cost of damage that will not become apparent until the time of a far richer future generation, any more than people in 1900 should have borne sacrifices to make people today slightly richer. Or why today’s poor should subsidise, through their electricity bills, today’s rich who receive subsidies for wind farms, which produce less than 0.5% of the country’s energy.
As Glenn often says, the poor don’t have the juice (literally, in this case). It’s always about the juice.
We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. We need take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation.
What he doesn’t (or at least didn’t) understand is that they want civilization, and humanity itself, to fail.
The human body’s immune systems protect us from harmful substances. But the body often rejects conventional antibiotics. But the new materials can work because they change themselves once they come into contact with water in the body or on its surface. The material self-assembles into a new polymer structure that is electrostatically attracted to the bacteria membranes (it’s like putting oil and water together). The polymers then break through the cell membranes, destroying the cell. The bacteria, which have amazing adaptive capabilities, can’t adapt to this kind of physical attack.
It works because cells have a natural electric charge. The polymers are drawn only to infected areas. Other antimicrobial materials aren’t biodegradable, but these new materials are made of simple organic molecules. That means they can naturally exit the body, in contrast to other medicines that gather in the body and cause side effects. That means it isn’t likely to cause skin irritation or other problems.
The polymers also swell into a gel form that doctors can easily manipulate. Hedrick said they can do so because of a “molecular zipper effect.” That is, the polymers interlock in the same way that zipper teeth do. When you move them around, they simply re-zip into a form that is deadly to bacteria.
The hydrogel has another interesting property. It can attack whole colonies of bacteria, particularly if it is injected directly into the region of an infection. These bacteria collections, known as biofilms, can be like the coatings of film on your teeth, germs on touchscreens, or growths on medical devices. The hydrogel penetrates the film and disrupts it.
“We can kill 100 percent of the bacteria and reduce the likelihood of a recurrence,” Hedrick said.
Now, if they could just come up with something similar for virii.