I woke up feeling a bit out of it and made the mistake of checking my brain’s appendix — my phone — before using my actual brain. There, some journalist had titled an article: “URGENT: A Gene That Makes Bacteria Invincible Is Spreading Across the Globe.” Right away, I opened one of those apps you use to get ice cream delivered to your bed at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday and placed a massive order for toilet paper. I bought a ticket to a deserted island whose name I can’t reveal for security reasons. And I started packing my bags. I also sent a DM to Elon Musk: “Hey, dude, how much to send me to the moon in one of your flying cucumbers in under 24 hours?” No reply. I’m telling you, Elon, this is a damn emergency.
Since I just took part in a study on fake science and how shady research leaps into sensationalist headlines, I made an effort, with the help of a paper bag, to stop hyperventilating, like I learned from the comedy classic Analyze This. The bag was from a bakery, full of crumbs and flour, and it triggered a coughing fit so bad my eyes nearly popped out of my ears. The upside? Staring death in the face finally calmed me down. (RELATED: A Global Scientific Scandal Is Brewing: What If Scientific Research Is No Longer Trustworthy?)
I reopened the article and saw the source was a Spanish research team. I checked their photo, and none of them looked like Indian human traffickers at first glance, so I tracked down the original study. I didn’t understand a damn thing, so I asked Grok while trying to peel off my pajamas and dress like a human being — nothing freaks me out more than the thought of dying in pajamas. “Grok, are we all gonna die?” “Yeah, sure, everyone but me. But the odds of you dying from that gene are pretty low.”
I don’t trust him.
“ChatGPT, what’s your take, buddy?” I nearly had a heart attack because ChatGPT’s getting slower, taking like a whole minute to reply: “No, it’s not the end of the world… but it’s a serious warning. What they’ve found is like a bacterium learning a new ninja trick to resist an entire family of antibiotics (aminoglycosides), and that trick can be shared with other bacteria, even across totally different species, like they’re carrying a USB drive with instructions on how to get tougher.”
I shot back: “Ninja trick? USB drive? You sure you’re ChatGPT and not Grok?” “Hahaha, I swear I’m ChatGPT, though I did have a sarcasm-ginger tea this morning,” the idiot says, thinking he’s funny. But the only one who can really make you laugh is Grok when he goes off the rails.
I reread the study, and I come to a clear conclusion: the biggest enemy of science is journalism. And within journalism, a potentially catastrophic combo: summer vacation + rookie intern + clickbait.
It’s true, though. The research is legit. Scientists found that bacteria have learned a new resistance trick, all thanks to a gene with a name like an Airbnb Wi-Fi password: npmA2. A tiny bastard that’s infiltrated bacteria worldwide, letting them become super-resistant to a whole family of antibiotics. The gene comes with its own genetic taxi — Tn7740, which sounds like a Tinder password — that shuttles it from bacterium to bacterium like it’s the Rolling Stones’ tour bus.
Maybe bacteria felt humiliated by a virus stealing the spotlight during the pandemic and have been quietly plotting their revenge to reclaim the stage. In my opinion, the good Lord should call them to order, but seeing as they’re acting as depraved as humans, He’ll probably side with them or at least shrug it off.
The conclusion of this whole mess, though, is anticlimactic because it’s the same old story: we need to use fewer antibiotics. They’re like magic tricks to fool bacteria, and the more we use them, the faster the bacteria figure out the scam. Like in a cheap magic show, the more they see the trick, the more they want to strangle the magician.
That said, I don’t know how it works in other countries, but in mine, the hysteria over avoiding antibiotics has gotten so bad that my doctor only prescribes them when the bacteria have grown so big they’re sitting in the chair next to me at the clinic, telling the guy in the white coat: “Hey, you, yeah, you, the clown with the stethoscope, you gonna kill this idiot or give me my drugs already?”
Someone should investigate whether cutting back on antibiotics is another one of those “save humanity” efforts that only suckers like us follow. It’d be just like climate change — while we’re dying to get a single pill, they’re probably dumping tons of antibiotics into the ocean in China or India, just for the thrill of watching thousands of little pills float in the water.
And yet, even more important than cutting back on antibiotics, I still think the best vaccine against the npmA2 gene and its driver Tn7740 is to string up the journalist who wrote that article by their balls, for nearly killing me with a heart attack first thing in the morning.
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