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I situate my research at the crossroads of history, philosophy, sociology and anthropology of science. In the past, I have focused on epigenetics, environmental research, empirical bioethics and environmental justice, within and outside the academia, as you can read here, or here. Now I am focusing on antibiotic resistance, and I use it as a lens to interpret the contradictions of the last century derived by industrial production, environmental degradation and biomedical cultures.

What interests me is the (at that time) new epistemic discourse that since the Forties has been produced to explain morphological changes of organisms produce when they experience new environmental conditions or perturbations. Through an important experiment at the base of the so-called concept of genetic assimilation, Conrad H. Waddington showed that a thermic shock can produce changes in wings’ veins of fruit flies, changes that can eventually be inherited across generations, without the environmental trigger that caused them.

This focus on production and (genetic) storage of biological differences elicited by the environment is nowadays coupled with the knowledge produced through microbiome research that explains the phenotypic patterns that recur across generations.

In a thought-provoking twist, with microbiome research, the focus shifts from production and inheritance of biological differences to production and inheritance of biological similarities. Microbiome research shows that some phenotypic patterns are allowed by ecological communities of microorganisms composing all animals. Bacteria allow the development and functioning of our bodies within an epistemic framework that is now key to understand biology. The network of vessels composing mammals’ stomach is formed through cellular differentiation and expression of genes coordinated by bacteria. The same is true for our immune system that is coordinated by gut bacteria. Food, which is an important aspect of our lives also impacts on this microecology and mediates between our biological functions and functioning of means of production whose parts dedicated to food production have immense importance for our biology and our internal and external ecologies. Antibiotic resistance is one of the crossroads where culture, biology, history and the Anthropocene meet. Indeed, Antibiotic resistance shows that means of production of our societies have an even more widespread, deep and allegedly unexpected impact on the biology of animals and plants. The microorganism can indeed adapt to resist the selective toxicity of antibiotics. Moreover, bacteria can transfer their genetic code horizontally, by touch, so that we can acquire antibiotic resistance by eating food that functions as a vector, by hosting lice on our heads and many other contacts. Bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics that have been used as growth factors in animal husbandry and to prevent diseases in livestock and aquaculture, spread in natural ecosystems and can be found in wild species. Rivers and estuarine waters are places hosting antibiotic resistance.

Searching on PubMed (the search engine for biomedical literature) titles of articles containing the terms ‘antimicrobial’ and ‘Louisiana’ I retrieved just one twelve-years-old article. No results with terms such as 'Mississippi' or 'New Orleans'. The authors collected and analysed Oysters from both waters of Louisiana Gulf and in restaurants and food retailers in Baton Rouge. In most of the samples gathered, scientists recognised the presence of bacteria (Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Vibrio vulnificus) resistant to specific antimicrobials. Food production is indeed the first factor in terms of the quantity of antibiotics used. This use and related antibiotic resistance impact all the living beings present in a specific area, and can easily travel around the globe through many channels. As Littman & Viens have highlighted, a sustainable future is a future without antibiotics as “there may be no truly sustainable way of using antibiotics in the long-run, as microorganisms have shown to be almost infinitely adaptable since the first introduction of antibiotics” (Littman & Viens 2015). But in the meanwhile, we need to use them and antibiotic resistance is a phenomenon that can be better studied through environmental research, by analysing wild species and emissions nearby livestock, for instance.

The study that I retrieved focuses on Oysters. But what about antibiotic resistance conveyed through food that is consumed by the most?

What about exposures of communities that are living in highly polluted areas?

And what is the additive value on antibiotic resistance for individuals who experience the presence of industrial pollutants and that live in areas where cancer epidemics are registered?

In this respect, there is a strategy to cope with the issue of antibiotic resistance promoted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The document doesn’t mention any action to monitor and regulate the production and usage of antibiotics in livestock. Nevertheless, the CDC wants to scrutinise, through genome sequencing, “Listeria, Salmonella, Campylobacter, and E. coli and uploads sequence data into PulseNet for nationwide monitoring of outbreaks and trends.” Moreover, the document reports that “In Fiscal Year 2019, Louisiana will begin simultaneously monitoring these isolates for resistance genes. When outbreaks are detected, local CDC-supported epidemiologists investigate the cases to stop spread.”

The questions that I would like to ask (to local ppl, activists, researchers, practitioners..) are:

What could be the epidemiologic characteristics (socioeconomic status, gender, residence..) of the populations more vulnerable to antibiotic resistance?

What is the additive role of antibiotic resistance for people living in highly polluted areas?

What is the impact of antibiotic resistance for people and patients living in areas where cancer incidence is high?

And on the long run I am interested in imagining possible strategies to not only living with the problem but also to tackle the problem itself, which means to develop strategies to answer the questions:

Why antibiotic resistance, which is known since a century, it’s a problem on the rise?

What is the role and interest of capitalism, in terms of profit-making of corporations, knowledge production and environmental degradation, in not being able to resolve antibiotic resistance?

What can be strategies of local communities to tackle the problem and to promote environmental justice in terms of alliances with ecologists, doctors, epidemiologists and other activists?

In 1993 near my city, Cuenca - Ecuador, it ocurred maybe the biggest disaster that we have expirienced, we called it "La Josefina". A mountain collapsed, due to legal and illegal mining, and it completely blocked a river. Quickly the water of the river started to flood the surrondings, there was the fear of the big city of the region, Cuenca, being also flooded, a lot of homes, forests and bridges were lost, and it caused a huge impact in many families that lost everything, 150 lives were lost. But one particular story always came to my mind when I hear about this disaster: a man, called Walter Sánchez, saved his house because he carefully looked up his construction and he felt that he could make his house float, he was not an engineer, or architect, he didn't have college education, but he, with help of his friends and familiy, gathered tens of empty barrils, attached to the bottom of the house -his house was mainly wood and was screwed to the floor- , and at the end, when the water came and flooded the terrain his house floated and was saved. Here is a post of BBC in spanish about this event.

This came to my mind because sometimes we think that the fight against Climate Change is expensive and as the most part of the world is poor, and those are the ones who suffer more the consequences, the fight is lost. But all over the world there is people that in order to safe their lives and personal belongings have witty and ingenious ideas low-cost. Elizabeth English had one of those ideas in 2007, she is an architect that was concerned about how to help people in New Orleans to survive and don't lose anything in future Hurricanes, she knew about the procedure in Netherlands for allowing houses to float but it was way to expensive to the population because it meant, actually rebuilt the house, and even if someone wanted to rebuilt his/hers home, it was way to expensive. She decided to create an alternative and founded the non-profit  Buoyant Foundation Project. You can read more about these "Anphibious Homes" here. 

The Guardian published in may this year an investigation about Reserve, best known as "Cancer Alley", a town 40 minutes in car away from New Orleans, it has gained this grim nickname because as Lousiana having the most toxic air from US (EPA's 2014 report) this town has the most toxic air from the State, so a person living in this town has 50 times more risk of developing cancer than in other towns of US. Even if this investigation is not about New Orleans, the town is really near, and as we know, pollution travels, being the River Mississipi an important contributor for movilizing the pollution through its way and also the air. Not only the town has been ignored by authorities and media coverage, also the inhabitants recount that this negligence is part of the history of the area, where their ancesters where enslaved by the rich and powerful, and in the present Denka factory is slowly killing them:

For many African Americans in Reserve, including Hampton, who trace their ancestry back to slavery in the area – the reminder of past atrocities is made even starker by knowing what the land has been used for since. “When you think about it, nothing has ever really changed,” she says. “First slavery, then sharecropping, now this. It’s just a new way of doing it.”

Cancer is not the only disease that haunts the residents of Reserve, others illness has been ocurring like  – gastroparesis – a rare intestinal disease linked to air pollution made principally by chloroprene. EPA has also failed the people, because as chloroprene is mainly produced in this part of the country, there is no intention to develop a legally enforceable standard for this toxin. As The Guardian points out, this decision leaves the residents completely disarmed, as they were not expecting anything anymore of State governement, they expected a lot of the Federal Governement that has alwasys helped African American communities when the local governement has failed. I believe this is a clear example of "enviromental racism" and we rely againg in an EPA-funded research that shows how poor towns are more likely to be more polluted and forgotten.

I found this summary (Sinking into the Anthropocene: New Orleans nature writing) of a visit to New Orleans made by a group of young writers, and what surprised me was their preocupation and insistence in linking the problems and even the nice or "typical" touristics things and landscapes of the city to the ongoing Anthropocene and Climate Change. Is just a piece of exercise of a collaborative writing and the approach to the topic is made by classical anglophone writers, Mary and Percy Shelley among others are quoted, but they talk about important issues like the Sinking, the Chemical Horizon andDaily Commutes. I leave an extract of the text to encourage its reading:

One sculpture that struck the class was an assemblage of tall slabs of glass towering from the grass: Mirror Labyrinth by Jeppe Hein. This is a tri-spiral maze of mirrors that reflect anything and everything the entering viewer sees. This piece conjured the feeling of a funhouse as we stumbled our way through, titillated by sudden sensations of disorientation. But thinking about this sculpture alongside the city’s ongoing gentrification and expansion, in tandem with denial of ecological realities and political resistance to enact real social justice, we could not help but think more along the lines of Cormac McCarthy’s use of the word “funhouse” in his novel The Road: “the ruins of a vast funhouse against the distant murk.” What is new here, now, cannot help but intimate a post-apocalyptic ruin to come.