The General Populace Of Western Civilization

In the last decade, the number of prescriptions for antibiotics has increases. Even though, antibiotics are helpful, an excess amount of antibiotics can be dangerous. Quite often antibiotics are wrongly prescribed to cure viruses when they are meant to target bacteria. Antibiotics are a type of medicine that is prone to kill microorganisms, or bacteria. By examining the PBS documentary Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria and the article “U.S. government taps GlaxoSmithKline for New Antibiotics” by Ben Hirschler as well as a few other articles can help depict the problem that is of doctors prescribing antibiotics wrongly or excessively, which can led to becoming harmful to the body.

The development of antibiotics was an important advancement in 20th century medicine. Previously deadly infectious diseases are now routinely treated with antibiotics. Moreover, for modern-day medical procedures such as chemotherapy treatment to be successful, antibiotic use is necessary. For these reasons, the prospect of bacteria developing widespread resistance to antibiotics is a major concern as it would render many modern-day medical therapies unviable.

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

Antibiotic resistance evolves in bacteria. Charles Darwin created the theory of evolution which focused on natural selection being the key factor of how things change. Natural selection is when organisms that are better suited to the environment are able to reproduce successfully. Evolution is descent with modification. Bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics by a mutation. The bacteria that did not die from the antibiotic inherited the gene from an ancestor that made it resistant. Since the other bacteria is dying faster than the resistant bacteria, the resistant bacteria are able to multiply

The article “The End of Antibiotics” discusses a 57 year old man that was dying and how doctors could only sit by while his condition deteriorated. This man was not shot or stabbed, he was infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria that was slowly killing him. He died months later after being bombarded with antibiotics in the form of capsules, tablets, and IVs (Begley par.1). This is the unsettling power that superbugs like this one has over modern day medicine. A superbug is a bacteria that has evolved its cellular structure to resist antibiotics. Dr. Richard Wenzel of the University of Iowa stated, “Only a few years after penicillin came into wide use with World War II, strains of staph had emerged

With all of our modern advances, it seems somewhat strange that chronic health problems have become so commonplace. When antibiotics were discovered, they predicted the end of disease. Instead, we now have a world full of frightening antibiotic resistant infections.

Antibiotics have played an essential role in the fight against diseases and infections since the 1940’s. Antibiotics are a leading cause for the rise of global average life expectancy in the 20th and 21st century. They have greatly reduced illnesses and deaths due to diseases. With the introductions of antibiotics in the 1940’s, like penicillin into clinical practice, formally deadly illnesses became immediately curable and saved thousands of lives (Yim 2006). Antibiotic use has been beneficial and when prescribed and taken correctly their effects on patients are exceedingly valuable. However, because these drugs have been used so widely and for such a long period of time the bacteria that the antibiotics are designed to kill have adapted,

The world health organisation has announced antibiotic resistance and the rise of superbugs as a great threat to human race. Superbugs are defined as bacteria equipped bacteria with "bullet proof vests” of antibiotic resistance that deflect "magic silver bullets" of antibiotics. Under right circumstances, they can transfer the antibiotic resistance genes to other bacteria and completely paralyse humans to combat against bacteria (news.com.au 2014). In Australia, thousands of people per year are diagnosed with superbugs and these victims often face a prolonged illness and ultimately death (Pogson 2012). The severity of the problem can become apparent by referring to the death attributable to antibiotic resistance every year from 2014 to 2050,

The second installment of the video series “Rx for Survival,” concerned itself with implications pertaining to bacteria that have become antibiotic-resistant and was titled “Rise of the Superbugs.” The video presented the cases of individuals who were afflicted with maladies resulting from bacterial infections that were not being impeded by the normative pharmaceutical care that we have used for many decades and take for granted.

Overtime, antibiotics have been favorable as well as negligent to society. Antibiotic usage is helpful to society because it kills and fights off bacteria in both humans and animals. With an increase in antibiotic usage, these bacteria have become resistant to certain drugs which reduce the chance of the bacteria being killed off and result in bacteria multiplying, causing increased harm to the infected. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2013), each year in the United States at least 2 million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die each year as a result to these infections. Although multiple bacteria are antibiotic resistant, and those numbers will continue to rise, antibiotics should remain a staple in the treatment of diseases, as opposed to abandoning their use which will cause an increase in the prevalence of bacterial infections.

As a child, many people can recall fights with their parents when having to take medicine or antibiotics. The struggling and crying became a routine soon enough, before the child’s health renewed, and all became well again until the next illness. Children usually hate antibiotics for a very good reason, though. The thick texture of the liquid form, the large pills that left a bad taste in one’s mouth if they took too long to swallow, the suffocating and slimy feeling of ointments and creams against the skin. Everyone’s experienced this before. However, taking antibiotics is not only unpleasant, but it’s also a risky business within a person’s body. Too little or too much of an antibiotic can have negative results. One of these results is the emergence of a bacteria line that almost seems like something out of a horror movie. Mutated strains called superbugs have already begun to leave their mark on the world. A nightmare indeed. Superbugs have become a massive problem that needs to be stopped with a stronger line of antibiotics, ones that researchers have only just now figured out how to create.

The phenomenon of antibiotic resistance occurs when bacterial organisms can resist – via several different avenues – the harmful effects of antibiotic drugs, which ultimately results in a selective advantage that is not shared amongst the remainder of the population that is still susceptible to the effects of the drugs. There are numerous ways that bacteria are known to show resistance to antibiotics. Some bacteria can modify the chemical nature of the drug, making it ineffective, and yet some possess a different form of target site that the drug is not compatible with, which inhibits the drug’s ability to bind to the bacterial cell. When coupled with prevalent antibiotic use amongst human populations, these acquired mechanisms of resistance can be selectively advantageous to the bacteria in possession of them. Being resistant to one or more antibiotic drugs means that these bacteria can survive and pass on their genes for resistance to their offspring, which can have negative effects on human populations, especially in the healthcare setting. Antibiotic resistance has garnered much attention in recent years across the developed world, as pathogenic microbes become resistant to more and more antibiotics thanks to both the overuse and misuse of these drugs. The increased frequency of which this problem has

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).

Less than 50 years after penicillin was discovered, strains of bacteria were discovered to be resistant to antibiotics (Haddox, 2013). Over the years scientists have changed the structure of the antibiotics to avoid this resistance, every time the bacteria adapts to overcome the changes. Bacteria divides as fast as 20 minutes and have many different ways to adapt (Haddox, 2013). Bacteria pass their drug resistance between strains and species, causing antibiotics to be less effective to all bacteria (Haddox, 2013).