/sci/ - Science & Math

pretty much bullshit. antibacterial substances, like alcohol and the additives in soap, don't function in a way bacteria can readily adapt to (unlike antibiotics). we've been using both for cleaning and sterlisation for centuries and there's been no appreciable resistance built up to either.

However, there are questions about the efficacy of the stuff they put into soap to make it antibacterial. there are also questions about whether we, as humans, should be trying to keep our environments aseptic even when we're not immunocompromised. lack of exposure to disease is linked with development of allergies and eczema and similar.

If any form of bacterium just so happened to have a mutation which gave it a natural resistance to the soap(presumably the alcohol), it would simply eliminate the competition and make that bacteria more likely to pass on it's mutation. In no means does the soap encourage this mutation, nor does it make the bacteria any more dangerous to you.

Sounds like a horseshit solution to me.

Basic principle I assume would be that the soap kills 99% of the "germs" except the ones that have some mutated form which survive and consequently breed.

Okay...so what? We make better anti-bacterial hand wash.

It's true.

Notice how all hand sanitizers say they kill 99.9% of the germs. That 00.1% of germs that survive the hand sanitizer then reproduce, and you kill 99.9% of that second generation, and the 00.1% of second generation germs that survive reproduce into a third generation, and so on and so on, until eventually the germs on your hand gradually build up an immunity to the hand sanitizer.

It's how evolution works, and how diseases mutate when they become immune to treatments.

You don't need to worry about it unless you're one of those nutjobs who uses hand sanitizer multiple times each day. But she is right, hot water and soap is better than hand sanitizer.

You know how I learned this? Biology.

>>4779221
It probably does kill all the bacteria, although because of advertising laws(and covering their own arse in case someone get's the shits one day and tries to blame them), they stick 99% on there.

>>4779218
>In no means does the soap encourage this mutation, nor does it make the bacteria any more dangerous to you.
this is fucking stupid. if the mutated organism is the only one left if it has no competition, therefore the mutation is encouraged. simple survival of the fittest. while this may not make the organism in question immediately more dangerous, it generally reduces our ability to control the bacteria in question. it may in the future become dangerous, or it may pass its mutation onto a dangerous relative, leaving us shit out of luck.

how bad do you think MRSA and c. diff would be if they were resistant to alcohol? in the UK we've been able to all-but-eliminate them from hospitals through proper infection control practices, most notably alcohol gelling everything, constantly. how do you think resistance would change that? stop being dumb.

I thought I was going to disagree when I read the word organic, but actually OP, your aunt's claims have some truth.

Traditional soap does not select for weaker bacteria, which cannot fight off the antibacterial properties of your original soap. Traditional soap simply washes some of them off.

Here's the problems with your aunt's thinking, however. The word organic is a marketing trick. Also, you won't create super germs that will kill you, just some that will stay in your hands even though you use antibac soap. The subtle flaw in logic is that you're keeping them there with "organic soap" anyway. This is the worse that will typically happen, if the bacteria become resistant to the soap. It will not make them pathogenic.

Moreover, she's fighting a losing battle, as the bacteria that can harm us are increasingly becoming resistant, not to soap, but to medicine. So, she's right in a very superficial way, not in a way that will make a difference.

The data is inconclusive on whether it promotes bacterial resistance.

However, overly sterile environments are unhealthy regardless.

strange hippie aunt

this is right for antibiotics but not for alcohol-containing soap

>>4779225
>Notice how all hand sanitizers say they kill 99.9% of the germs. That 00.1% of germs that survive the hand sanitizer then reproduce, and you kill 99.9% of that second generation, and the 00.1% of second generation germs that survive reproduce into a third generation, and so on and so on, until eventually the germs on your hand gradually build up an immunity to the hand sanitizer.

this is fucking bullshit

they say they kill 99.9% of bacteria because that's all they can prove have been killed. learn how fucking logarithms and exponents work, son. those that "survive" are actually those that are not proveably dead through statistical analysis, not those that have survived due to freak mutations.

>>4779227
if it killed all the bacteria, they would say it kills all the bacteria.

they can't say it kills all the bacteria for the same reason Cheerios says their cereal "MAY HELP lower your cholesterol" rather than just "lowers your cholesterol" because it would be false advertising otherwise

>>4779247
What I meant was, the bacteria don't actively seek a resistance. Using the soap doesn't make it more likely for a mutation like that to occur.

Unfortunately the antibacterial agents are ones the bacteria cannot evolve a defense against. They're substances that destroy ALL LIFE ON EARTH but in minute quantities and in solutions that won't penetrate your skin.

Ask your aunt if throwing all of humanity into the sun will evolve some humans immune to 5,500 c fire.

It's the same basic thing only on a microscopic level.

But Anti-bacterial soap is organic.

I'm literally covered in eczema.

It started out from where my ass crap forms into my back. It began spreading a few years ago and now it's all over. I look like a fucking giant rugburn. A giant fucking rugburned, blistered white man.

Bacteria cannot "become resistant" to alcohol the same way they can an antibiotic. Think of it in terms of basic general chemistry. The alcohol is simply making the membrane more soluble water and lose integrity so that the force of washing your hands rips them apart.

It's as silly as doing an experiment where you try to breed a dog that can specifically survive a train running over it.

Hippies also believe shit like:

Use cold water when making pasta. It will come to a boil quicker.

Vinegar and baking soda will disinfect clothing.

Regulated tap water is harmful.

Plants grown without organic soil harbor more pests.

It's reasonable to spend twice as much on products as long as they're organic and from the earth and not magically programmed into reality by some unnatural force.

>>4779297
vinegar disinfects!

>>4779309
Sure, mildly, but notice how I said hippies claim that it disinfects clothing. This is not true. Most bacteria from body secretions is not killed by vinegar .

Fucking retards everywhere. Not all soaps are alcoholic. Google and see all the horrible shit caused by Triclosan, also known as Microban, Irgasan, and 2,4,4'-trichloro-2'-hydroxydiphenyl ether.

>>4779297
>Use cold water when making pasta. It will come to a boil quicker.

But hot water does freezes faster.

>>4779527
>Hot water freezes faster.
In specific conditions, sure.

>>4779198
Tell her not to fuck with your god damned shit if she's going to stay at your place OP, fuck. Unless you live with your parents, in which case its their job.

>>4779527

So how does this change things?

>>4779547

I'm visiting my family right now, it's summer for me.

>>4779549
Then I guess its not really your problem. Seems pretty obnoxious to throw away and replace the damned soap though. I once had an aunt tell me not to keep my weed in plastic (which I didn't do at the time anyway, if I had have though I'd have continued doing so), but throwing away the damned soap - that's another level.

>>4779558

She's fucking overbearing, but she really does have a great personality.

Anybody wanna tell me why having Triclosan changes anything?

>>4779280
This guy got it. Rubbing your hands kills germs, soap, alcohol, hot water, and chlorhexidine only make them more susceptible to being pulled apart.

>>4779564
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triclosan#Resistance_concerns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_resistance

So your Aunt is correct in principle but its likely the soap she threw out was perfectly fine. They don't become immune to the soap they become immune to the specific ingredients in the soap, which if they are similar or the same as anti-biotics used for the treatment of disease could lead to super germs.

For example if you are using a soap that has penicillin in it and you are constantly exposed to streptococcus bacteria, the bacteria could become immune to penicillin and then you would have a strep throat that you cant kill with standard antibiotics.

This situation seems pretty unlikely though, and I agree with >>4779221
>We make better anti-bacterial hand wash.
The only problem is the future will have people who can afford our new anti-superbacterial soap for these super diseases will be fine but those who cant will die even faster, the result of which would be a host of poor street dwellers that the bacteria can incubate in until it becomes a super killer and we have a global bear-flu that demolishes the world in a day.

>Claims that antibacterial hand soap "makes the germs immune to the soap and become super germs"

This claim is probably not true since antibacterials aren't mutagens. However, if there were *already* such a mutation in the set of "germs", then this soap would be a strong selective pressure. This is a realistic problem.

Just like the clap! That's right, it's back---with a vengeance.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=return-of-the-clap

(PS: still think women are "worth it"?)

>>4779198
The 'antibacterial' elements in those soaps is very small, almost completely useless.

That being said, most "soaps" are actually detergents. Look at the list of ingredients. Most of them contain some sort of moisturizer these days, because it's a fucking detergent, it washes all the natural oils and moisture out of your skin, and they have to put it back so people don't end up with dermatitis, especially these days when everyone so obsessively washes their hands.

"Natural" soaps (saponified oils) don't dry the shit out of your skin anywhere as bad. I've had dermatitis from shitty "antibacterial" detergent-soaps, and I don't buy the stuff anymore for use at home. I don't get sick much, and I'm not dirty, either.

Your hippie aunt may be coming from a weird place, but she's right about this one, but for the wrong reasons: the act of washing gets rid of most of the bacteria, but it's the detergent-style soaps that do too good a job and dry out your skin that encourage bacterial growth, because your skin being too dried out by it reduces it's own natural defense against infection.

IT ISN'T ALCOHOL YOU RETARDS

things like triclosan, which provide no benefit to human health and may cause resistance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triclosan

>>4781389
A point that many washers miss is that washing with soap is only necessary at most a couple of times per day. Not every fucking time you go to the sink. For example, one can wash with soap before a meal, and without soap afterwards.

ok op, picture this. you ever play fallout? you drop nukes all over a population, but they don't all die. a few make it and they rebuild.
well, same shit goes down on your hands
one in a hundred thousand make it out alive, and millions more die off because of the hostile conditions you've created on your skin, but there are some that survive the sanitizer.
the strongest ones
so the hardier, more chemically resistant bacteria survive and and in the couple of hours that pass between application of sanitizer, a few more bacterial generations come and go, each one descended from the survivors of an extinction level event.
and you sanitize again, only stronger bacteria survive, and so on, until you eventually create an pathogen that is immune to every antibacterial agent we've discovered.

TL;DR? it's like using bug bombs in your house but the bug bombs let one out of every million roaches live and also gives them total control over both china and america's nuclear arsenal

>>4781430
Why wash at all after a meal?

>>4779225
they're not all dead, but thinking that we're a few years from living out "the stand" via hand sanitizer is pretty reactionary and crazy.
the theory is that a few strong ones will survive and eventually you end up with unkillable bacteria, but for all we know we've created dozens of unkillable bacteria that we don't know about because they don't affect humans or are totally harmless.
an unkillable virus is only a problem if it wants to kill us, after all

>>4781521

>>4781558
Good luck washing fat and oil off your fingers with plain water.

>>4781523
>an unkillable virus is only a problem if it wants to kill us, after all
It's already dead.

>>4781572
No.
Death implies that it was once alive.
It was not.

that terrible feeling when /sci/ always bags on biology yet they don't understand the basic principles of evolution. How do you guys get such a big ego anyways?

Anti bacterial soap kill bacteria, and when bacteria evolve to become resistant to it we can no longer kill them with antibacterial stuff.

However soap doesn't "kill" bacteria, it removes them. It physically removes all the dirt from your skin. Bacteria can't become resistant to being removed.
That's why in the hospital some patients have diseases that require the anti-bacterial stuff to not be used and you have to wash your hands instead.

>>4781584
> How do you guys get such a big ego anyways?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

In short, moron thinks they're super qualified because they have an opinon on /sci/

>>4781572
hmm i seem to have mixed up virus and bacteria.


hey, how do viruses work? they're just proteinn filled with DNA, how does that DNA get into a host bacteria?

>>4781590
or more specifically, how does the virus find a bacterium to infect?
just drifts until it gets lucky?

>>4781596
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/cellular-microscopic/virus-human2.htm

pretty much...though it's not really that simple

>>4781596
yes, basically

>>4781521
'cause I don't want my hands to smell like tacos all day long. ;-)