A woman in Nevada dies from a bacterial infection
that was resistant to 26 different antibiotics.
A U.K. patient contracts a case of multidrug-resistant gonorrhea never seen before.
A typhoid superbug kills hundreds in Pakistan.
These stories from recent years — and many
others — raise fears about the possibility
of a post-antibiotic world.
The development of antibiotics in the early
20th century was one of the greatest leaps
forward of modern medicine.
Suddenly, common illnesses like pneumonia,
strep throat and gonorrhea were no longer
potential death sentences.
But even in antibiotics’ infancy, it was
clear that their misuse and overuse could
lead to antibiotic resistance and eventually
create untreatable superbugs.
[clip] “The doctor knows that if he uses
an antibiotic when it really isn’t called
for, he may sensitize you so that some future
time when you have a really serious infection
calling for an antibiotic, it wouldn't be
possible to use it."
Here’s how that works.
Superbugs are the product of simple, microscopic
Darwinism: the survival of the fittest.
You’ve got a colony of bacteria, and you
flood them with antibiotics.
Most of the bacteria die, but there’s a
tiny, tiny chance that a few of them survive.
And if you repeat this process with a new
antibiotic, those few survivors would now
be resistant to two antibiotics.
Survive.
Multiply.
Repeat.
That’s how a superbug is born.
To prevent superbugs, public health officials
have pushed for decades for restraint in the
use of antibiotics.
But despite their best efforts, antibiotic
use and resistance have boomed.
In fact, over the last 15 years, antibiotic
consumption rose 79 percent in China, 65 percent
in Pakistan, and doubled in India.
Easier access to antibiotics is, without a
doubt, a huge benefit to millions of people.
But as antibiotic use continues to spread,
the risk of superbugs rises, especially in
places with overcrowded urban areas or poor
sanitation or cultures of overprescription.
And it doesn’t matter whether a superbug
emerges in Washington, D.C., or Mumbai.
If something isn’t done to either come up
with new, better antibiotics or to stop misusing
the ones we currently have, scientists say
we could be heading to a post-antibiotic world
… one very similar to the 1800s when bacterial
infections were routinely deadly.
Jason Beaubien, NPR News, Washington.
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