Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria

Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria documentary has had me paranoid. It’s scary to think foreign bacteria can enter your body and shut it down. The most informing information was the NDM-1 wasn’t a bacteria it was a resistance gene that can turn bacteria into superbugs. I do think antibiotics are being over used. I agree with M.D Arjun Srinivasan,” the more you expose a bacteria to an antibiotic, the greater the likelihood that resistance to that antibiotic is going to develop. So the more antibiotics we put into people, we put into the environment, the more opportunities we create for these bacteria to become resistant”.

Antibiotics, composed of microorganisms such as streptomycin and penicillin, kill other infectious microorganisms in the human body. At one point, antibiotics were considered to have “basically wiped out infection in the United States”, but due to their overuse and evolutionary

Antibiotics are inarguably one of the greatest advances in medical science of the past century. Although the first natural antibiotic Penicillin was not discovered until 1928 by Scottish biologist Alexander Flemming, evidence exists that certain plant and mold growths were used to treat infections in ancient Egypt, ancient India, and classical Greece (Forrest, 1982). In our modern world with the advent of synthetic chemistry synthetic antibiotics like Erithromycin and its derivative Azithromycin have been developed. Antibiotics have many uses including the treatment of bacterial and protozoan infection, in surgical operations and prophylactically to prevent the development of an infection. Through these applications, antibiotics have saved countless lives across the world and radically altered the field of medicine. Though a wonderful and potentially lifesaving tool, antibiotic use is not without its disadvantages. Mankind has perhaps been too lax in regulation and too liberal in application of antibiotics and growing antibiotic resistance is the price we must now pay. A recent study showed that perhaps 70% of bacterial infections acquired during hospital visits in the United States are resistant to at least one class of antibiotic (Leeb, 2004). Bacteria are not helpless and their genetic capabilities have allowed them to take advantage of society’s overuse of antibiotics, allowing them to develop

Research has revealed how overprescribing antibiotic creates several adverse outcomes, including the development of multidrug resistant organisms, Clostridium difficile infection, and increased costs of health care (Myung et al., 2015). The Consumer Report (2015) raised concern for the overuse of antibiotics and how it leads to the loss of the ability to treat serious infections. Doctors,

The misuse of penicillin and other antibiotics however is causing the growing problem of antibiotic resistance in which seemingly harmless infections turn to be deadly and dangerous. Antibiotics are not only casually used as treatments for bacterial infections, but are also used in agriculture and veterinary medicine, creating controversy on the proper uses of antibiotics. As advancements in the medical fields proved to be beneficial for a short period of time, today the misuse of these innovations are creating more and more problems that have proven to be dangerous to the accustomed health of the global population. Antibiotics were not always considered to be a superficial medication and, in fact, have been naturally used for millions of years, like with ants and their symbiosis with antibiotic producing fungi. Humans do not fully realize the value that antibiotics have brought to the population and do not take measures to preserve their use. In contrast, humans take for advantage the natural benefits that is given to them to overly benefit themselves, such as while creating revenue through mass production despite warning from scientists. This selfish misuse leads to consequences in which the future will have to provide solutions for, and perhaps even follow in the ants’ footsteps.

Antibiotics-resistant organisms have become one of the most serious threats to public health, infecting over two million people and killing approximately 23,000 people annually.1 According to the CDC, “total inappropriate antibiotic use,” such as prescribing unnecessary antibiotics or giving the wrong dose or duration, makes up to 50% of all outpatient antibiotic use,2,3 and in 2009, the United States spent $10.7 billion on antibiotics, indicating that there is a lot of potential money to save.4

Little research has been done on human superbugs but even less on antibiotic resistance in animals and whether the bacteria can be passed on to humans (Press Release 1998). The problem with the growing number of bacteria that are resistance to available antibiotics, is that there are very few new antibiotics in development. The financial costs of creating newer and stronger antibiotics are exceedingly high. Pharmaceutical manufactures either don’t have the money or refuse to because of the small amount of profit they will make from these one off drugs. Research institutes are another option for new antibiotics but also don’t have the sufficient financial support (Kesselheim 2010). Antibiotic resistant patients require extensive care and there are rare cases that they need complete isolation. The cost of this intensive care for long periods of time is phenomenal. With growing rates of resistance cases more isolation units are going to be in need which will cost governments hundreds, even thousands of dollars to provide (Lansing 2011). The economic factors of antibiotic resistance for developing world countries are worrying. Some counties health systems have no where near enough financial support or staff members to help the number of superbug patients (Kaier 2011). The economic implications of the growing rates of superbug cases is concerning. Globally there is very

It seems that human can start to overcome most of diseases by using antibiotics without any bad influence. But as time goes by, the side effects show up. The excessive use of antibiotics brings the disadvantages and problems with the heaps of advantages simultaneously. Antibiotics are not only exacerbating the health risk of animals, and human beings, but also exacerbating the environmental impairment. The antibiotics are used to treat and prevent diseases in human beings and animals’ medicine, but there are many kinds of risks deriving from the antibiotics therapies, which include the development and spread of resistant bacteria strains and environmental contamination; besides, the micro-biotic organism is also a big issue we need to concern about.

Superbugs will start to affect health care costs. The majority of new antibiotics are unsuccessful due to the appearance of various superbugs, this means that vast amounts of money will be spent in order to try and control infections (Mcardle, 2011). Health systems are already under immense strain due to the older population. Moreover this means that many people will battle to afford the cost of caring for people in the future (Cooper, 2013) if superbugs cannot be controlled. Davies justifies that, “Rarely has modern medicine faced such a grave threat. Without antibiotics, treatments from minor surgery to major transplants could become impossible, and health-care costs are likely to spiral as we resort to newer, more expensive antibiotics

In the last fifty years, the most prominent and transformative medical advancement made was the discovery of antibiotics and disinfectants. On the contrary, with the uncovering of antibiotics came the repercussion of the progressively threatening antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria or ‘superbugs’ formed due to the lack of care from the people to follow through with simple safety procedures in order to entirely get rid of bacterial illnesses and infections. Appropriate precautions are necessary and expectedly need to be taken, in order to minimize and possibly prohibit the formation, continual growth and limit the strength of resistance in the antibiotic-resistant superbugs, and most importantly to preserve medical advancements

It has been a widely held belief for many years that antibiotics are a type of “cure all” used by doctors. However, due to some disturbing medical cases, doctors are becoming increasingly concerned that the same antibiotics they have been using for a number of years may start causing more medical issues than they are helping. In this article there are two real life examples of families who have experienced devastating consequences antibiotics not working as they should.

Brad Spellberg of UCLA the main reason for doctors overprescribing antibiotics is fear, fear of being wrong . This fear derives from the dilemma that occurs when there is, as described in the documentary, a 95% chance that the patient has a virus, but still a 5% chance that they have a bacteria. In instances as such, where the doctor cannot, with any certainty, distinguish the two from each other , the doctor will in almost all instances prescribe the antibiotic. Moreover, according to Dr. Buddy Creech doctors also feel the need to prescribe antibiotics because they know that the patient will recover more quickly with antibacterial assistance , which is a ramification of great benefit to the patient. Dr Buddy Creech continued by stating that the repercussion of such practices is that out of every five people that are given antibiotics, only two or three of them actually need it. Bakterietrusselen also shows an aspect of antibiotic use the general public rarely sees, namely the use of antibiotics in food animals. According to the NRDC, the renowned non-profit (Natural Resources Defence Counsel), “Livestock producers routinely give antibiotics to animals to make them grow faster or help them survive crowded, stressful, and unsanitary conditions”

In today’s society, people take antibiotics for cold or minor pain symptoms. What people do not understand is what damages antibiotics can do to an individual’s body. Often, people see advertisements of others taking medicine to treat pain symptoms, however, they do not realize that doctors do not recommend them. This topic is important because people need to be informed about the medicine they take. This may save people from buying expensive medicines that pharmacies sell, this will keep peoples immune systems stronger if they only take antibiotics for severe cases, and people will not get resistant to antibiotics as frequently. Thus, if antibiotics would be needed for important purposes, individuals may not need high doses

The overuse of antibiotics has been a problem for well over a decade. This misuse leads to many nonvisible problems arising within the human population. As the use of antibiotics increases, the number of antibiotic resistant bacteria also increases. When bacteria become resistant to an antibiotic, another antibiotic must be used to try and kill it and the cycle becomes vicious. Michael Martin, Sapna Thottathil, and Thomas Newman stated that antimicrobial resistance is, “an increasingly serious threat to global public health that requires action across all government sectors and society” (2409).

Antibiotics are the most frequently prescribed and misused drugs and there are reported concerns about the continuous indiscriminate and excessive use of antibiotics leading to emergence of antibiotic-resistant organisms (McLellan and Gray 2001; Krivoy et al. 2007). The use of antimicrobial agents, especially antibiotics has become a routine practice for the treatment of pediatric illnesses (Ghai and Paul 1988; Summers and Summers B 1986). According to Dowell et al. (1998); Nyquist et al. (1998); Nash et al. (2002) a substantial portion of prescribed antibiotics is considered nonessential, and such prescribing may be due to reasons related to: patients, parents or guardians, or the physicians.