Frontline's (PBS) Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria

Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria is a Frontline documentary that focuses on a set of medical crises that have much of its origins in environmental problems.The nightmare in question is a number of rapidly developing "superbugs" (bacteria/germs) that are hard or impossible to defeat once they enter a person's body. These antibiotic resistant superbugs are appearing all over the world and are becoming a critical threat wherever they exist. Doctors are quickly finding that no antibiotic protocols are working anymore to deal with the rapidly evolving bacteria that can kill people quickly if not diagnosed and brought under control. Without the basic tools of modern medicine, which usually is the use of ever stronger antibiotics, the medical profession is terrified that outbreaks can occur anywhere, even in the most prestigious of all hospital settings and once unleashed becomes nearly impossible to control.

Frontline uses the basic documentary strategy of introducing us to the problem by focusing on two personal stories, one of a young woman of eleven years of age and a mid-twenties man, both of whom develop devastating bacterial infections that cannot be controlled with most, if not all, means of modern medicine's protocols. Then the documentary moves on to the disaster at the National Institute of Health's Clinical Center, where 19 patients developed antibiotic resistant superbugs that deeply sickened them all, and eventually killed 7. The inability of one of the world's most prestigious hospitals to understand and then quickly handle the crisis points out the danger these new antibiotic resistant superbugs present to the world wide medical establishment.

Using basic reconstruction strategies, interviews with patients, family member, doctors, nurses and administrators, Frontline attempts to both personalize the tragedies, while also focusing on the universal problems these new "bugs" represent.The male patient had contracted his infection in India so Frontline dutifully shows us street scenes of incredible poverty and filth where citizens struggle with basic needs like washing, cleaning and drinking from disease ridden water supplies. They attempt to connect this state of affairs  with the obligatory shots of airline travel attempting to quickly prove that nobody is safe from these terrifying new problems.The young woman's relatives speak at length at her struggles and the repeated discoveries that her infection was impossible to stop using every antibiotic that was in their medical arsenal. Doctors, nurses and researchers confirm the serious nature of the problem by focusing on the tragedy of one woman's life.

The presentation of the crisis at the Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland ramps up the drama. We are shown numerous interviews with staff at the hospital, including the revelation that the problem was so severe that administrators considered closing down the hospital, because nothing could stop the spread of infections. Numerous recreations of the problems in the ICU unit were presented, emphasizing that no matter what the conscientious staff attempted, the bug was always one step ahead of them.
This medical nightmare combines with a medical detective story. How have the bugs appeared, how can they be detected, can they be stopped and with what protocols? There is no happy ending here and no closure. The problem is stated, but since no clear solutions are in place we seem to be warned to expect these outbreaks to occur anywhere and at anytime.The fact that 100,000 Americans die of hospital borne infections every year connects logically with Frontline's more intimate examination of this ever increasing crisis.

The environmental problems that have contributed to this new nightmare include poverty, mass populations struggling to survive without access to basic needs, the overuse of antibiotics by patients and doctors and the enormous introduction of antibiotics  into the world wide food chain.The ever increasing demand for meat, poultry and fish by ever larger populations has allowed factory farming techniques to employ the use of enormous amounts of antibiotics to quickly produce animals of the appropriate size for slaughter. The use of any antibiotics into the feed of animals is suspect, but the intense overuse of such medicines to not only protect against infections in such tight and compressed operations is exacerbated by the fact that these medicines can also help produce quicker growth spurts.

Thus profit is put before any concern about human health. The creation of superbugs at the point of basic food production is now becoming one of key problems for world wide health.As these food production techniques increase Frontline's documentary easily exposes what the results of these efforts can produce. Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria contributes to our understanding of the evolving nature of antibiotic  resistant "superbugs" but also sensitizes us to some of the reasons behind their success in the contemporary world.