Comments on: Advertiser: 56-44 to Labor in SA

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:45:27 +0000

I thought the groundwater would just add to the complexity and therefore expense. It might be enough to tip the viability over to rebuild on site or build at Keswick Barracks or the Clipsal site.

By: Al

Al — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:39:38 +0000

No idea, sorry. I’m not a civil/enviro engineer so it’s not really my area. There will be a huge amount of contamination on the site, so significant civil works will be required. As far as I was aware, I thought they’d discovered the diesel contamination had reached the groundwater. I can’t see how groundwater would stop construction.

By: bob1234

bob1234 — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:48:34 +0000

Any idea how long before the Jan-Mar Newspoll is out?

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:57:42 +0000

Any truth to the very strong rumour that the engineers at the New RAH site have hit Torrens River groundwater and things are looking very grim?

By: Al

Al — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:55:23 +0000

Bearing in mind that I’m biased because I work for a company tendering for the new-RAH, from an engineering perspective it is generally better to go with a new building than to try and refit an existing one. You can talk about saving costs on construction, but at the end of the day, the space constraints that you have to work with and dealing with existing plant really limits what you can do. Because you end up so highly limited, you then have only limited plant selections you can get by with and may have to go with much more expensive options. Retrofitting old buildings to bring them up to scratch with current BCA requirements can be a huge pain. When you design a building from scratch, you can really make sure there’s enough room to get the equipment in that you need.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:07:54 +0000

You can’t blame them. As you said, they really were Hail Mary drugs. Still, the NHMRC should be putting money into this as it’s a potentially huge problem.

By: sykesie

sykesie — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:02:34 +0000

The bad news from a drug discovery perspective (which is my field of expertise), is there are very few new antibiotics in phase III clinical trials. Big pharma just don’t see the returns in this area, because any new drugs developed are generally kept as a drug of last resort – which obviously means that the dividends they receive are not as good. Hence the ridiculous costs of using some of these more unheard of antibiotics.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:21:44 +0000

Why is there so much VRE in those places? We always think of these multi-resistant bugs as being the product of over-prescription of antibiotics in first-world countries and the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics in animal feed.

The VRE was much worse than MRSA. We had to use antibiotics I’d never even heard of which cost thousands a day. MRSA isn’t nearly as bad as everyone says; it’s pretty easy to treat but VRE was a disaster. We didn’t have any deaths from Bali at the RAH but we certainly had deaths from VRE which came back from there and spread.

By: sykesie

sykesie — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:11:23 +0000

Similar trends were seen in the USA after the second Gulf War I believe and the return of injured American troops to American hospitals.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:01:58 +0000

sykesie

Almost all the VRE at the RAH came from the Bali victims. They jumped in the pool and sea etc. Somehow they almost all arrived with VRE, which surprised me greatly as you wouldn’t think Bali would be infested with VRE, unless they use dodgy antibiotic food practices. I literally took years for the VRE to get under control.