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Winter 2002
Jumping off the pesticide treadmill
By Steve Tally
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| Since
insecticides were first used in the mid-1800s, there have
been more than 500 reported cases of insects becoming resistant
to the insecticide meant to control them. |
As serious
as insect pesticide resistance is, it hardly conjures up the same
level of concern as antibiotic resistance. In the mid-1990s, the
death rates for several diseases, such as tuberculosis and staph
infections, began increasing rapidly as the bacteria responsible
became resistant to antibiotics that had months earlier stopped
such infections cold.
Pittendrigh
says it's possible that negative cross-resistance could also be
used with pharmaceutical products to combat antibiotic resistance.
"I think
the concept is sound and is not an organism-specific concept,"
he says. "Although our research is primarily focused on issues
of insecticide resistance, we don't rule out the possibility that
this approach may also be useful in combating antibiotic resistance.
But we will leave the applicability of negative cross-resistance
in bacteria to researchers who work in antibiotic resistance."
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