That’s exactly what the village elders used to do in Pusville, Maryland.
But their survival was just good fortune, like a human who luckily got the only cold spot in the oven. The progeny of the survivors will not be genetically adapted to caustic agents.
Liberal, I meant to specifically except caustics from that scenario - which my understanding of how triclosan works leaves it still as something where there may be adaptations the organism can select for to allow it to resist exposure.
I’ll admit, too, part of my thinking is that I always have the example of the chemosynthetic ecosystems around black smokers in the back of mind. The chemical environment alone, there, would be fatal to most organisms. Likewise the thermal environment. Yet they still are living there. And not simply a few closely related species that have radiatively adapted to the conditions there, but representatives of widely different species and phyla.
If organisms can adapt to temperatures that high, and hydrogen sulfide concentrations that high - I’m going to have to be convinced, by citations, that it’s impossible for microfauna to become resistant to many of the current anti-bacterial agents available.
But my friend’s daughter went in with a cough. She didn’t have any skin issues. By the time they treated her, her lungs were destroyed. Are we supposed to get every cough checked in case it’s MRSA-related??
But why do you think those were adaptations rather than preservations? It may well be that the earliest species that evolved in those conditions could not have survived elsewhere. On the other hand, is there any evidence that something has adapted that well to such extremes after only a generation or two? It seems to me that that sort of mutational luck would be damn near miraculous.
I’m not sure how prevalent or effective they are, but aren’t there anti-bacterial products that operate on the differences between bacteria and eukaryotes? After all, we are about as different from bacteria as possible, including fundamental differences in cellular structure and proteins. Unless they can suddenly evolve into an archaea I don’t think they’d be able to avoid these 
However, I could be totally wrong that there are these types of antibacterial formulations.
Well, some of the species in the vicinity of black smokers may have been preservations, as I understand you to mean the term.
But the ones that stick out in my mind are the vent crabs . The idea of parallel evolution hits my bullshit meter so hard that the idea snaps. I cannot imagine any origin for those, in particular, that doesn’t involve some near-miraculous adaptations. (Note, these vent crabs are not the only species of crab associated with black smokers.)
So, per my understanding of evolutionary theory - given that I’m rejecting parallel evolution for crabs in general - we’ve got two choices: Either crabs originated in black smoker environments, and then spread from there, or crabs from elsewhere managed to colonize the black smokers with one Hell of a lot of luck.
If it were the first, I’d think that there would be a number of ‘relict’ traits in crabs all over the world - sulfide tolerance for one, thermal tolerances for another. They might not be the same degree as current vent crabs can tolerate - but the trait would still be there.
Now, I’ll admit I haven’t looked for that trait, and I’m not sure I’d know how to go about finding a study to back up my assumption. But, barring proof that crabs have such relict traits - I’m afraid my use of Occam’s razor is going to leave me going with the miraculous adaptation school of thought, rather than the preserved population school. For the crabs, that is. I haven’t the foggiest about things like the clams, nor the bacteria found in black smokers. And some of the critters down there seem to have to have evolved in those conditions - the armored gastropod mentioned in this wiki article is a huge departure from normal gastropods: using iron sulfides (specifically pyrite and greigite) compounds, instead of calcium carbonate, to harden it’s sclerites.
Goddamn it. I provided actual, honest-to-goodness peer-reviewed cites about triclosan resistance. Pubmed alone pulls up 165 fucking results in a search for “triclosan resistance”.
How much more evidence does the world need?
Hey! I heard you. You’re not just speaking to walls. Honest.
I’m just going off on what seems to me to be parallel arguments, trying to support the cites you brought up.
I see that my use of the term ‘antiseptic’ was incorrect and sloppy. And out of date.
In my decrepit mind, I applied the terms to carbolic acids, iodines, and mercury compounds. And there I see that those still manage to resistance-proof almost all the time, and serious resistance to them is not expected. They are of course, rather toxic, unpleasant substances that can play hell with normal tissues.
But there is certainly more worrisome resistance potential to some of the more modern antiseptics, such as triclosan.
My apologies.
I still reserve my biggest worries for the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance.
No argument there. I originally meant to mention only an additional troubling concern I had, not to imply an equivalence of hazard between antibiotic resistance and resistance to antiseptics.
I also see the same mind-set being expressed by the people who demand antibiotics for all their ills, and those who use anti-bacterial cleansers for all purposes. So, while antibiotic resistance is the more serious problem, the mindset seems to me to be part of the root cause for some of that problem.
It seems to me that you two have reached an amenable compromise.