The idea that the phage could help before, during, and after is pretty interesting. Because although sometimes there are Prophylactic antibiotics, they aren't generally given to an entire population to my knowledge. And since diseases like this tend to be endemic to specific areas rather than a case here and there worldwide, so having something that's almost the equivalent of vaccine (although presumably short lived?) could really be effective for locals and travelers. Reducing the load ending back up in the water supply would then further reduce cases (ideally, although the extremely low load for this one may make it difficult).
Dysentery is no joke: the defining symptom, blood in your stool, comes from your intestinal lining sloughing off. A good friend of mine got it in India and said
the waves of pain whenever she had to defecate were worse than giving birth without anesthetics.
The one upside is that dysentery is common enough in India that it was promptly recognized and treated, with a single giant horse pill targeting both bacillary & amoebic dysentery that basically cured her in 24 hours.
I'm not the person you're asking, but I may be able to satisfy your curiosity a little. I have given birth without anesthesia -- in fact, I did so twice. I found it arduous and difficult, and there certainly were moments of pain, but I would not describe the experience overall as exactly painful.
You know how when you've been running for a long time and you really want to stop? That was the primary unpleasant sensation for me. Something between a muscle cramp and a side ache, though quite intense. Really uncomfortable, really hard work. Very distressing if you freak out about it and get frightened, but actually a pretty cool experience if you lean into it. Toward the end of labor there was some significant pain, enough to make me yell, but there was also so much going on that I was very distracted from it. You can experience some pretty significant pain and not be very badly distressed by it if you're super focused on some goal and working hard for it, and boy does childbirth have that effect. ;)
Now, you shouldn't overly generalize from my personal experiences. Every pregnancy is different, and every delivery is different. But I have always thought the characterization of childbirth as the greatest possible pain was overblown. In my experience, it was more like a major athletic event which involved some significant injury - a marathon or a boxing match or something in that neighborhood. You do really injure yourself enough that it takes some weeks to heal, but I honestly think that part of the equation is comparable to a bad sprain. Maybe a bit worse, but much more like an athletic injury than some of the horrible diseases people get.
At any rate, it is not the most significant pain I've personally experienced. That prize goes to an infected gall bladder / passed gall stone. I've also had leg cramps which I thought were more painful than childbirth, though they didn't last as long. To relate it to the original claim, I definitely think it's plausible that dysentary is worse. Internal organs dying is high on the pain scale.
(If you're curious about why I chose to avoid anaesthesia, I hadn't liked it during my first delivery. I had a long and painful labor during which anesthesia was delayed, and when I finally got it, I found it didn't much lift my distress -- I later understood that was because my pain wasn't pain exactly, it was me doing a poor job of working with my body. Aaand I was at a dumb hospital that had put me on my back, which is painful, and I didn't know any better. Anyway. I didn't see it as really relieving my discomfort, but it did confine me to bed for a couple days and robbed me of being my most alert and best self during a very important moment in my life. My second two deliveries were better experiences than my first.)
Yeah, I’m going to say you were pretty lucky. With my first I had pain significant enough to be traumatic, before the stage where I could get an epidural. I used to tell people if I’d gone out and had my husband run over my leg with the car, it would have hurt less and I could have gotten pain relief in the ER. It wasn’t as bad the second time though. It is truly a large range of experiences.
Thanks for asking this -- your question made me realize I don't have much experience with pain at all! The answer is pretty run of the mill stuff -- I got my finger stuck in a door-crack-like spot. Ugh.
Childbirth pain is not horrible and sharp like that. It feels a lot more productive, so to speak. It's not right to use the word "pain" to describe both things actually. Without that pain, you'd have to depend upon a nurse to tell you when to push -- there would be a delay between her seeing the monitor and asking you to push. It all seemed very unlikely to work to me (but of course it works). But if you feel the pain yourself, you will know when to push.
Also it comes in waves. After each wave of "pain", you get completely pain-free rest periods. But of course towards the end when the baby actually comes out, the rest periods shorten and the pain periods lengthen so it all kind of rolls into one. Many women are not so lucky as me and have prolonged labour, lasting into days. Mine only lasted a few hours so it was fine.
I completely agree with the other person who replied to you. Personally I said no to anaesthesia because they put that in your spine -- shudder.
Oh you sweet, sweet summer child... While it's possible that you're right, I don't think that's as clear as you make it out to be. A quick google didn't give me any concrete numbers, but at least for Urine, according to Wikpedia, " watersports (meaning urolagnia) was ranked ninth in popularity among sexual fetishes in the United Kingdom"[0], and " 1999 study of 164 males in Finland from two SM clubs found that 18.2% had engaged in coprophilia"[1] (of course, this number is for a sub-population that is more likely to try out kinks).
I don't have good numbers for birthing without any anesthesia either, but the Australian Institute of Health and Wealthfare claims that "In 2022, 4 in 5 (80%) women who had labour in Australia received pain relief"[2].
Giving birth is a "0-3 times in a lifetime" event, while sex is a much more high-frequency thing. I'm assuming even people who engage in these fetishes do that every time they have sex, but still many more times than they'd give birth.
So let's try to come up with some numbers: lets say we have 8 billion people on earth, and 1% of the adult population engages in watersports or scat, and they do so 10 times a year for 30 years of their life.
That's 300 * 80M = 24B times someone eats shit / drinks piss in the next 30 years.
On the other hand, let's say we have ~4 billion women on earth, each gives an average of 2 children in the next 30 years, and 20% do that without pain relief. That's 4B * 2 * 0.2 = 2B births without pain relief in the next 30 years.
Australia is a wealthy country with a low birth rate. It is not representative of global non-anesthetic rates. The average woman globally is poorer (less likely to have pain relief) and more likely to be pregnant in her lifetime.
And just because someone “engages in watersports” doesn’t mean they know what urine or feces taste like.
And the question was about the number of people. You included statistics regarding the number of events. Going off your own numbers, 1% play water sports, 20% of women (10% of people) give birth without pain killers. Seems pretty clear to me.
The discussion is pointless and was meant as a jest, but
> And the question was about the number of people. You included statistics regarding the number of events.
The poster just said "more common". It's your interpretation that this was "a question about the number of people". But that's just one of many possible framings of the question. "The number of events" is an equally valid one.
> "In 2022, 4 in 5 (80%) women who had labour in Australia received pain relief"[2].
20% not having any pain relieve puts it into "fairly common" category. Yes it is a minority, but it is also rather large minority. It means that more then 20% of women who have children had at least one of them without pain relief.
The presence of that phrase alone is enough to instantly downvote and flag any and every post on sight, even those that are otherwise neutral or even positive. It's usually intended as somewhat lighthearted, but it comes across as smug and pandering, and extremely condescending, like you said.
> The presence of that phrase alone is enough to instantly downvote and flag any and every post on sight, even those that are otherwise neutral or even positive
I feel you're severely overreacting. If everyone would act that way, this community would definitely be much a worse place. Kant's Imperative and all that.
I disagree firmly. The phrase embodies a sense of superiority and "knowing better" than those it's directed at which is directly contrary to the Guidelines of HN.
20% is enough to make it "not rare". It means that more then 20% of women with children have experienced that - because if you have multiple children, one could be with epidural and another without it.
Well I have not had dysentery but I have read "Infinite Jest" and had no trouble finishing it. It's an amazing book and particularly so for someone like me who was obsessed with "Hamlet" as a teen. That said it's a serious modern novel and while it contains a lot of very funny parts it's also at times difficult.
If you like David Foster Wallace his other two novels "Broom of the system" and "The Pale King" are also great. The Pale King was left unfinished when he died and was completed (from various drafts and notes) as a labour of love and respect from his notes by his editor. It's genuinely extraordinary and could possibly even have been his greatest work if he had been able to fully complete it. As is there are certain minor things in it that I'm sure he would have revised (eg I noticed some sentences are repeated etc).
If you're not sure about David Foster Wallace I can really recommend his essays and literary criticism as consistently insightful and extraordinary and also his journalism. From his essays for a starting point I would recommend "De Unibus Pluram" and also "Fictional futures and the conspicuously young", and also "Roger Federer as Religious Experience"[1]. Of his journalism I would strongly recommend "Getting away from already being pretty much away from it all" which is an amazing write up of the experience of visiting a rural state fair and "A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again" which is the same sort of thing about going on a cruise ship. Both are very funny and perceptive.
If you like those you know what you're getting into with this novels.
[1] Especially if you like tennis. He also wrote an amazing essay about a tennis player who is very good but not quite good enough to make the top level and is struggling to break through. THat one is amazing but the title escapes me.
The tennis player in question is Michael T. Joyce. You can read the article on Esquire's site: https://www.esquire.com/sports/a5151/the-string-theory-david... but it's DFW so it's 15k words (approx 60 pages), which is more fun to read on paper or at least some kind of e-reader.
Phags are really promising in case of antibiotics-resistant bacterias. However I wonder how long does it take to find out the bacteria is resitant, breed new phages and apply them.
It's because from my experience doctors usually give me antibiotics even BEFORE they find out what bacteria I have. "Oh you have pneumonia, better give you clavulanic acid". Next time they provide me with something else. When I asked "should we make a bacterial culture" - they say "it will take so much time, better take the antibiotics now".
For a sick person after antibiotics therapy and after culture test results, those days/weeks to raise another culture of phages might be deadly.
This makes it seem like it's just easy, but doesn't really say that for sure I guess:
What if the bacteria become resistant to the phages too?
Well, that can happen easily – probably even easier than with antibiotics. Cells have been duking it out with viruses since the beginning of life. (Did you know CRISPR-Cas9, now used for gene editing, evolved in nature as a way for bacteria to recognize and cut up phage DNA?)
But the difference is that whereas new antibiotics are very hard to find, there is a nigh-inexhaustible evolutionary font of phages constantly pulling ahead in the arms race. So in short: once a bacteria becomes resistant to your special phage, just find a new phage.
The bacteria develop resistance fairly quickly, but you can somewhat get around that with cocktails of phages (like a bunch of phages at once).
> For a sick person after antibiotics therapy and after culture test results, those days/weeks to raise another culture of phages might be deadly
The hope is that you'd have a bunch of phages ready to go from a variety of patients. So you wouldn't need to make a new culture. However, right now they often do personalized phage therapy because they can only get it approved as a last-hope kinda deal. But then it makes the scientists only target chronic infections, because it does take a couple months to get another cocktail of phages ready to go.
If you’re already sick, you probably have a raging bacterial infection going on. Waiting three days for a culture is unlikely to improve the choice of therapy for someone not sick enough to be in the hospital.
My eustachian tubes plugged up while I was flying home from my honeymoon. Three days later, my ears were still stopped up. I was in medical school at the time, so I went to the student health clinic (run by senior residents). I said that I had ear infections commonly as a child, that this ear had been plugged for three days, and could I have antibiotics? He said, let’s look first. He did. He then said, “no pain, just dulled hearing? No fevers?” Correct. “That’s the worst-looking eardrum I have ever seen in an adult. Here’s some amoxicillin-clavulanate.”
Antibiotics are broadly classified as bacteriostatic (prevents multiplication) or bacteriocidal (kills living bacteria). Amoxicillin (like all beta-lactam antibiotics) is bacteriocidal. Thirty minutes after I took my first dose, I vividly experienced this. Chills, fever, shivering, sweating that lasted for almost two hours as millions or billions of bacteria died and their dead cells entered my bloodstream. The second dose was not as bad but still unpleasant. By the third dose, I just felt a few minutes of unpleasantness. And after three days, my ear finally unplugged.
> Stated another way, more people die from dysentery now, every year than ever died from any cause on the Oregon Trail. So let’s calm down about the Oregon Trail, okay?
Getting paid $4,000 to participate in a trial that could potentially save thousands of lives for a disease is incredible. But even better that it's a somewhat neglected disease that doesn't often occur in the western world. Sounds like the experiment was a success and I am hopefully/excited to see this rolled out!
"My friend Ozy said that Infinite Jest was a really good book for reading in a dysentery ward."
I made the mistake of trying to read Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey when I had covid last. I never finished it, and when I try to read it now it reminds too much of how awful I felt.
56 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadWay more to learn here. The Soviets were really big on phage research also, wonder if they still have any interesting learnings: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7653335/
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/05/03/...
The one upside is that dysentery is common enough in India that it was promptly recognized and treated, with a single giant horse pill targeting both bacillary & amoebic dysentery that basically cured her in 24 hours.
I always wondered how people knew about that
You know how when you've been running for a long time and you really want to stop? That was the primary unpleasant sensation for me. Something between a muscle cramp and a side ache, though quite intense. Really uncomfortable, really hard work. Very distressing if you freak out about it and get frightened, but actually a pretty cool experience if you lean into it. Toward the end of labor there was some significant pain, enough to make me yell, but there was also so much going on that I was very distracted from it. You can experience some pretty significant pain and not be very badly distressed by it if you're super focused on some goal and working hard for it, and boy does childbirth have that effect. ;)
Now, you shouldn't overly generalize from my personal experiences. Every pregnancy is different, and every delivery is different. But I have always thought the characterization of childbirth as the greatest possible pain was overblown. In my experience, it was more like a major athletic event which involved some significant injury - a marathon or a boxing match or something in that neighborhood. You do really injure yourself enough that it takes some weeks to heal, but I honestly think that part of the equation is comparable to a bad sprain. Maybe a bit worse, but much more like an athletic injury than some of the horrible diseases people get.
At any rate, it is not the most significant pain I've personally experienced. That prize goes to an infected gall bladder / passed gall stone. I've also had leg cramps which I thought were more painful than childbirth, though they didn't last as long. To relate it to the original claim, I definitely think it's plausible that dysentary is worse. Internal organs dying is high on the pain scale.
(If you're curious about why I chose to avoid anaesthesia, I hadn't liked it during my first delivery. I had a long and painful labor during which anesthesia was delayed, and when I finally got it, I found it didn't much lift my distress -- I later understood that was because my pain wasn't pain exactly, it was me doing a poor job of working with my body. Aaand I was at a dumb hospital that had put me on my back, which is painful, and I didn't know any better. Anyway. I didn't see it as really relieving my discomfort, but it did confine me to bed for a couple days and robbed me of being my most alert and best self during a very important moment in my life. My second two deliveries were better experiences than my first.)
Childbirth pain is not horrible and sharp like that. It feels a lot more productive, so to speak. It's not right to use the word "pain" to describe both things actually. Without that pain, you'd have to depend upon a nurse to tell you when to push -- there would be a delay between her seeing the monitor and asking you to push. It all seemed very unlikely to work to me (but of course it works). But if you feel the pain yourself, you will know when to push.
Also it comes in waves. After each wave of "pain", you get completely pain-free rest periods. But of course towards the end when the baby actually comes out, the rest periods shorten and the pain periods lengthen so it all kind of rolls into one. Many women are not so lucky as me and have prolonged labour, lasting into days. Mine only lasted a few hours so it was fine.
I completely agree with the other person who replied to you. Personally I said no to anaesthesia because they put that in your spine -- shudder.
I don't have good numbers for birthing without any anesthesia either, but the Australian Institute of Health and Wealthfare claims that "In 2022, 4 in 5 (80%) women who had labour in Australia received pain relief"[2].
Giving birth is a "0-3 times in a lifetime" event, while sex is a much more high-frequency thing. I'm assuming even people who engage in these fetishes do that every time they have sex, but still many more times than they'd give birth.
So let's try to come up with some numbers: lets say we have 8 billion people on earth, and 1% of the adult population engages in watersports or scat, and they do so 10 times a year for 30 years of their life. That's 300 * 80M = 24B times someone eats shit / drinks piss in the next 30 years.
On the other hand, let's say we have ~4 billion women on earth, each gives an average of 2 children in the next 30 years, and 20% do that without pain relief. That's 4B * 2 * 0.2 = 2B births without pain relief in the next 30 years.
I don't think that what you're saying adds up.
Sources:
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolagnia
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophilia
[2] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mothers-babies/australias-mo...
And just because someone “engages in watersports” doesn’t mean they know what urine or feces taste like.
And the question was about the number of people. You included statistics regarding the number of events. Going off your own numbers, 1% play water sports, 20% of women (10% of people) give birth without pain killers. Seems pretty clear to me.
> And the question was about the number of people. You included statistics regarding the number of events.
The poster just said "more common". It's your interpretation that this was "a question about the number of people". But that's just one of many possible framings of the question. "The number of events" is an equally valid one.
20% not having any pain relieve puts it into "fairly common" category. Yes it is a minority, but it is also rather large minority. It means that more then 20% of women who have children had at least one of them without pain relief.
Is the condescension really necessary? Also, the phrase is really overused at this point.
I feel you're severely overreacting. If everyone would act that way, this community would definitely be much a worse place. Kant's Imperative and all that.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
If you like David Foster Wallace his other two novels "Broom of the system" and "The Pale King" are also great. The Pale King was left unfinished when he died and was completed (from various drafts and notes) as a labour of love and respect from his notes by his editor. It's genuinely extraordinary and could possibly even have been his greatest work if he had been able to fully complete it. As is there are certain minor things in it that I'm sure he would have revised (eg I noticed some sentences are repeated etc).
If you're not sure about David Foster Wallace I can really recommend his essays and literary criticism as consistently insightful and extraordinary and also his journalism. From his essays for a starting point I would recommend "De Unibus Pluram" and also "Fictional futures and the conspicuously young", and also "Roger Federer as Religious Experience"[1]. Of his journalism I would strongly recommend "Getting away from already being pretty much away from it all" which is an amazing write up of the experience of visiting a rural state fair and "A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again" which is the same sort of thing about going on a cruise ship. Both are very funny and perceptive.
If you like those you know what you're getting into with this novels.
[1] Especially if you like tennis. He also wrote an amazing essay about a tennis player who is very good but not quite good enough to make the top level and is struggling to break through. THat one is amazing but the title escapes me.
It's because from my experience doctors usually give me antibiotics even BEFORE they find out what bacteria I have. "Oh you have pneumonia, better give you clavulanic acid". Next time they provide me with something else. When I asked "should we make a bacterial culture" - they say "it will take so much time, better take the antibiotics now".
For a sick person after antibiotics therapy and after culture test results, those days/weeks to raise another culture of phages might be deadly.
> For a sick person after antibiotics therapy and after culture test results, those days/weeks to raise another culture of phages might be deadly
The hope is that you'd have a bunch of phages ready to go from a variety of patients. So you wouldn't need to make a new culture. However, right now they often do personalized phage therapy because they can only get it approved as a last-hope kinda deal. But then it makes the scientists only target chronic infections, because it does take a couple months to get another cocktail of phages ready to go.
My eustachian tubes plugged up while I was flying home from my honeymoon. Three days later, my ears were still stopped up. I was in medical school at the time, so I went to the student health clinic (run by senior residents). I said that I had ear infections commonly as a child, that this ear had been plugged for three days, and could I have antibiotics? He said, let’s look first. He did. He then said, “no pain, just dulled hearing? No fevers?” Correct. “That’s the worst-looking eardrum I have ever seen in an adult. Here’s some amoxicillin-clavulanate.”
Antibiotics are broadly classified as bacteriostatic (prevents multiplication) or bacteriocidal (kills living bacteria). Amoxicillin (like all beta-lactam antibiotics) is bacteriocidal. Thirty minutes after I took my first dose, I vividly experienced this. Chills, fever, shivering, sweating that lasted for almost two hours as millions or billions of bacteria died and their dead cells entered my bloodstream. The second dose was not as bad but still unpleasant. By the third dose, I just felt a few minutes of unpleasantness. And after three days, my ear finally unplugged.
Okay fine. Fuck.
It's not money for nothing and it's a bigger choice than people credit.
I made the mistake of trying to read Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey when I had covid last. I never finished it, and when I try to read it now it reminds too much of how awful I felt.