Only in the Laboratory

Now, I can wonder if I haven't heard it all. In the Sunday new York Times Magazine, I ran into an article about E. coli Wipes. E. coli is big time news these days. We all have read and heard about spinach, and the mess that Taco Bell got into with their scallions. People can get as sick as a blue ox when they ingest certain types of E. coli. Some may even die. E. coli is everywhere in our environment.

These two scientists at Cornell University have developed a wipe made of a coating that when dipped in another solution shows the prescence of some bacteria. So far the number of infectious agents that can be identified is limited, but one strain of E. coli does show up. They also are working on a "non-dip" system to make use of the wipes easier.

This sounds good, BUT I have a few reservations. Unless you are in some sort of clean room like that found in some hospitals, bacteria and virus abound. Even the clean rooms are not sterile. Can you imagine a wipe of a car door handle, a set of keys, an armrest on a bus or airplane? Pathogens are all around us, and our bodies are invaded numerous times a day. Brushing your teeth has been shown to cause bacteria to enter the bloodstream. The possibilities are endless, but in the majority of invasions the body uses its natural defenses to rid itself of these agents.

Could this turn the population into a mass of Lady Macbeths? Can you imagine the gallons of hand sanitizer people will carry around? There would be long lines at sinks for handwashing (still the single most effective disease prevetion method of all). How about running a wipe over your sweetie's lips before a kiss or holding hands? No one would venture into a public place since a wipe would prove it to be a pesthole. Airline travel would be for only those willing to get into special suits that would exclude all contamination (airplanes are still one of the truest forms of pestilence delivering agents in this world). Of course, any idiot that could pound sand would be wiping down all the scallions in taco Bell. These are just a few examples.

This could be one of those discoveries that is best relegated to the trash heap of history. Just a thought.