The doctor's office just told me that they were not allowed to call in

[Aristus]

249. Wow! Really? Are you sure you want to make an argument that's that stupid?

I mean, shit! I'm embarrassed for you!

You should try this on someone who is not as smart as I am.

(Incidentally, I'm not a doctor; I'm a Physician Assistant. But don't let that throw you. I've been trained in clinical medicine. Got a diploma and a medical license and everything. I'm not qualified to brand cattle, but that's not what I do all day in clinic anyway.)

I never said bacteria weren't present. Simply that they may not be pathogenic, or contributing to the patient's current infection.

Pathogenic bacteria rarely need to be controlled by bacteriocidal medications. This is most often done by simple, natural growth of beneficial bacteria. We call it 'flora' in clinical medicine, because if you say 'bacteria', people freak out. Just look at, well, every reply up above that wasn't posted by allied health personnel.

Of the millions of varieties of bacteria, the vast majority of them are neither helpful nor harmful; they're just there. Most of the rest are beneficial to humans, helping us to digest our food, and so on. Only a very small portion of these organisms are pathogenic.

Two simple examples of flora are gut flora and vaginal flora. The growth of billions (and in the colon, trillions) of these bacteria help to arrest the growth, and crowd out the population of pathogenic bacteria. Consumption of too many antibiotic medications, or routine use of some specific antibiotics, kill not only the bad bacteria, but the good, as well. Which is why antibiotic use can cause bacterial vaginosis or yeast infections in women, and diarrhea in both men and women. With the overgrowth of flora killed off by the medication, any pathogens that survived due to resistance mutation are free to multiply like crazy, with no flora to check the spread.

If you want to have a serious discussion with a serious scientist, I welcome that. If you're just going to post idiotic arguments in order to be a pain in the ass, well, that's not going to hurt me. But other people may be mislead by your misinformation, and that's not good. Show some responsibility, and drop out of the discussion.