If there was not such an over population problem in US prisons this would not happen.  It is because of the over crowding and lack of sanitation that US prisons are becoming more and more death chambers.  Prisons are big business just like selling cars; and with law enforcement more quota orientated today than "serving and protecting," cops have become nothing more than salespeople for the government, out there looking for crime and oftentimes creating it were it would not otherwise be.

We need prison reform!  And we need drug reform to make our society more humane and civilized.  And we need to stop treating law enforcement as a business with incentives to meet quotas, arrests, forfeitures, budgets, etc.

BTW, someone should be sneaking Marc some cannabis oil.  Applied topically, Marc might beat this superbug.

The State Departments of Public Health ought to  be all over this situation. If they're not, then some sharp lawyer needs to ensure they become involved... particularly in the case of private prisons. You know darn well that in any other service industry there are public health laws that must be enforced, or they shut the place of business down. Why isn't that the case with the prison systems?

Does this "SuperBug" affect inmates more than prison staff ? Do CIA agents hold positions in American prisons? If an undercover CIA agent could connect you with a peanut butter sandwich that caused illness, would you be able to prove it? An apple maybe? Are prisons a good place to deal with people that pose a  threat to the establishment? Cannabis has health benefits that the establishment money is terrorfied of. Hence its prohibition. Ron Paul 2012.

I've spent over 5 years in various prisons in Pennsylvania and can only note how clean they were kept at all times. For the prison, inmate labor is virtually free (7 to 50 cents an hour), so they have lots of people cleaning all parts of the prison everyday. Inmates have very little to do, and tend to keep their cells in pristine condition. Showers are also taken everyday, buy virtually everybody. There is a few mentally unstable people that have to be coerced into taking daily showers though. So for the most part MRSA in prisons doesn't have much to do with cleanliness, after all, it is a super-bug, it's even found in hospitals. Blame societies fear of the common cold, bacteria, viruses, and the over use of antibiotics, and antiseptics, but most of all blame the draconian laws from our fascist government for overcrowding...

of human life is not an "unintended consequence" of the drug war; it's the WHOLE POINT.

I am running for The United States Congress on a platform AGAINST the War on Drugs.  http://www.romainforcongress.com/

Other than those who have vested financial interests in not seeing the truth –such as the Pharmaceutical, Tobacco, Alcohol, and Prison Industrial Complex/“Treatment” industries, -most people who talk about The War on Drugs agree that it is a failure on every front but what to do…? What can any one person do…?  On the day that I or anyone else who subscribes to my plan takes office in a position with pardon power, THE DRUG WAR IS OVER in that jurisdiction.  While a Governor or a President can’t write law or usually even determine what on the books is enforced, pre-emptive online pardons for drug law violations from that day forward will stop it on day one.  When coupled with a requirement that any distribution have occurred in warning covered packages while banning advertising promotions, usage will drop, -with a precipitous decline in the murders, corruptions, overdoses, environmental poisonings, funding of terrorist/criminal elements, wrong or “right” house raids, horrific imprisonments and other problems caused by the War on Drugs.  -Marc Romain 

Marc Emery was plea-bargain manipulated into US prison for acts not illegal in Canada where he did them - selling cannabis-seed.

The DEA used BIG resources in going after Emery, in a shamefully unprincipled, person-oriented (not crime-oriented) action. The DEA wanted to make an example of Emery, and have done - a very bad one. The case is disgusting No justice ruling, only power ruling.

What a weird case this will look like to history (if we humans and our records survive our onslaught on the plant-world and the rest of the Biosphere we depend on): a man forced from one supposedly sovereign country to another, where under threat of long, unfair imprisonment he is made to accept 5 years incarceration - all for spreading the seed of one of the longest surviving cultural plants in use on Earth, a plant still today giving at least 300 million people worldwide (4 % - UN numbers) much happiness regularly.

This would be a great science fiction scenario, if written to give warning of how downtrodden reason may become in the world.

And still under incarceration the mistreatment and indirect persecution goes on: Emery, previously healthy, is infected with a "prison-bug" that threatens his life. He should be awarded millions of dollars in damages from the USA.

Best of luck to this prince of reason.

Let's not make too much of this.  He had a boil.  Boils are a very common skin condition that probably most people will get some time or other.  They're usually the product of a Gram+ bacterium, and S. aureus is a very common cause of such skin infections.  In fact if it's just a boil, that's a fairly minor, localized problem compared to some types of skin infection Gram+ bacteria can produce: impetigo and erysipelas.

OK, so it turned out to be a methicillin-resistant strain.  We don't know how many of us, if we were to do sensitivity tests of the various Strep species our skin is colonized by, have methicillin resistant ones.  It may be that very many of us are so colonized and never know because we never develop an infection, i.e. symptoms.  So now we know that Mr. Emery was, and for all we know may still be, colonized by MRSA.

Sure, he could develop necrotizing fasciitis, or who knows what else (including the more prosaic but still problematic infections of the type I mentioned above).  But chances are he won't.  The people who get these opportunistic infections do so because of "host factors" -- i.e. conditions of their body that predispose them to infection, or more severe infection, by organisms which aren't that virulent to begin with.  An example would be an old lady I knew who was bedridden and had to be hospitalized from some cause I've forgotten (pneumonia, maybe), developed bed sores that led to a bone infection, and eventually died from kidney failure as a result of the antibiotics that had to be used against the infection.  If Mr. Emery is not in such a condition, the odds are overwhelmingly against his progressing to such a case, regardless of how often he does or doesn't wash his hands.

At some future time were he tested again, he may turn out to no longer be colonized by MRSA, as his skin flora will have turned over.  OTOH, MRSA could be prominent in the population of Gram+ bacteria on his skin the rest of his life.  AFAIK, efforts to sterilize the skin, as for instance germicidal soaks, are not recommended.

Roman doctors used to use garlic as an antibiotic for nasty sword wounds, etc.  I tried it once on a localized growing bacterial infection that wasn't responding to drugstore treatment. It could have been from a spider bite.  Anyway, I used a poultice of garlic on it, which "nuked" the area, killing the infection and a little area around it.  Everything healed nicely. 

I was originally infected in the hospital with this back in 99, and the problem is that once you get it you never get rid of it. I have had to go back on antibiotics several times(at least 6X) since then to try to get it under control. They told me the old spider bite story, but it usually erupts from some small skin lesion like a zit and the next day it is like a strawberry. It then will spread all over your own skin until you get on a set of 2 differerent antibiotics(Gram+/-) to kill it off. the drugs make you feel like shit and it takes about 2 weeks to get over the infection. It then will come back on you when you have a weakened immune system. I think it is a plague for life once you get it. I still get it about 2X a year.