Detergents that kill 99.99% of germs

[Numsgil]

Have any of you seen the commercials for the soaps that kill 99.99% of bacteria?  Does anyone else think they're almost criminally irresponsible?

I mean, they kill all but a handful of germs.  Why does that .01% survive?  Probably because they're immune in some way.

 :blink: Where have we seen this before?  Oh yeah, penicillin!  HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING?

60 years from now hospitals will be battling to stay anaseptic.  Basic handwashing soap will either be innefective or tighly regulated (I'm sorry Mrs. Jones, but #1 doesn't need soap.).

All because germ-o-phobic parents are scared of a few surface germs.  MADNESS!

[PurpleYouko]

They even put labels like that on Bleach!

I think they are just covering their asses in case some new breed of super germ learns to thrive on the stuff.

 :D  PY  :D

[Numsgil]

If you find a germ that can live in bleach I think you can safely say
[span style=\'font-size:11pt;line-height:100%\']SCIENCE HAS GONE TO FAR[[/span] (que up the cheesy b-scifi movie soundtrack)

[shvarz]

There is no stuff that works immediately and 100% efficiently, unless it is so toxic that it is harmful to use.  Take that soap:  simply because it is a detergent, it is going to kill bacteria, but not immediately.  It will dpepnd on strength of the detergent, its concentration and time you expose bacteria to the stuff.  For each of these things you can create a curve, like time vs. % killed or concentration vs. % killed.

For hand soap you can't really vary the time too much - people are not going to soak their hands for hours in soap.  So the detergent must work within 10 seconds or so.  So you start varying the strength and concentration.  But there is another problem - if soap is too strong, it will make your hands dry and damage skin.  So the idea is to find the right balance.  Previosuly most of soaps were under-strenghthed (sp?).  These guys claim they found the right balance.

But for me this is just a gimmick.  The 99.9% killing rate (I have not actually seen ads for 99.99%) means that one in a thousand bacteria survive.  Considering the amount of bacteria we have on our hands, this is really nothing.  It just gives you a false sense of security :)

[Zelos]

there will allways be those who become immune to things, but the imunisation might open other ways they become vurneble in, but not necceserely and SCIENCE DONT GO TO FAR, it makes progress, its not the science decision how to use things, sure science made the nuclear bomb, but it was never a scientist who gave the acctual order to drop it, it was the president.  science makes progress, the politics decied how to use it. like cloning, its good, but its the politicers choice how to use it.