Media Makes The Case For A Faster Drug Testing Kit
The writer of the following article had a special interest in the mention on TV of the need for a faster drug testing kit. The writer has worked on the development of testing kits. While the writer did not contribute to the development of any sort of drug testing kit, she still appreciates the rigors of the kit-development process. The writer knows that a faster testing kit can not be created overnight. The writer thus wants to supplement the call from other types of media for a way to test rapidly for drug resistance in a sample that’s been taken from an infected patient.An employer or a police officer would be likely to see a drug testing kit as an easy way to obtain evidence of drug use by, respectively, an employee or an errant driver. A microbiologist, though, would have a far different way of viewing the capabilities of a drug testing kit. Such a scientist would probably focus on its ability to monitor the action of particular drugs.
During the last week of May in 2007, a continuing media story highlighted the importance of a drug testing kit. In fact, it contrasted the abilities of two different kits. One was the existing test kit, the one that had been used to test for drug resistance in the bacteria of a known TB patient. That kit had failed to provide fast results. In fact, the patient had left the U.S. by the time that the results had been reported and studied carefully.
That fact was what had brought the existence of drug testing kits into the media limelight. That fact had motivated the call for an instant drug test kit. That fact had demonstrated the manner by which society could expect to benefit from such a kit.
In the early spring of 2007, doctors had discovered tuberculosis (TB) in the lungs of one young, male lawyer. Doctors wanted to know how to treat that TB. They needed to know which of the available antibiotics would be able to kill the disease-causing bacteria. In order to obtain the needed information, the doctors looked to the results of a laboratory drug testing kit.
Now this article suggested that the media stories had compared two different drug testing kits. If one was the too-slow laboratory kit, then what was the other kit? The other kit was the one that researchers needed to work on; it was the faster drug testing kit.
If the testing laboratory had had access to a faster kit, then the doctors would have known earlier that their patient had in his lungs the extremely drug resistant TB. They would have known earlier that their patient put others at great risk by flying across the Atlantic on an airplane. They might have averted the situation that exits today.
Today many of the passengers who shared a plane with the TB-carrying lawyer are understandably upset. They want to know how close they sat to that source of infection. They are not able to get a quick answer, because no one had recognized the importance of the seating chart.
Perhaps if the testing lab had had a faster drug testing kit, the airlines could have been alerted about the need for seating records. Perhaps the airlines could even have helped to delay the departure of the TB-carrying passenger.