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Originally posted by DragonFire1024
Swine flu is a virus...not a bacteria. So two totally different things here.
Australia has recorded three cases of the same new class of superbug - the most resistant to antibiotics yet seen - that is on the rise in the UK.
And, like in Britain, it's the growing number of patients jetting out for "medical tourism" that is blamed for the increasingly impervious bacteria arriving on Australia's shores.
from NDM-1 Wiki
New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1)[1] is a gene that makes bacteria resistant to antibiotics of the carbapenem family. It encodes a type of beta-lactamase enzyme called a carbapenemase. Bacteria that carry this gene are often referred to by news reporters as "superbugs."[2] There are currently no new drugs in the research pipelines that aim to stop NDM-1.[3] To date, some strains of E.coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae are known carriers of the gene, but the gene can be transmitted from one strain of bacteria to another through horizontal gene transfer.
from Horizontal Gene Transfer Wiki
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), also Lateral gene transfer (LGT), is any process in which an organism incorporates genetic material from another organism without being the offspring of that organism. By contrast, vertical transfer occurs when an organism receives genetic material from its ancestor, e.g., its parent or a species from which it has evolved.
Most thinking in genetics has focused upon vertical transfer, but there is a growing awareness that horizontal gene transfer is a highly significant phenomenon and amongst single-celled organisms perhaps the dominant form of genetic transfer.