Antibiotics

When people try to kill bacteria with a small amount of antibiotics, they can, in fact, make the bacteria stronger. Why does it happen? While some microorganisms perish from the antibiotics, it is still not enough for stronger bacteria. Too small amount of antibiotics cannot kill them. Consequently, the stronger bacteria not only survive, but also accommodate to living with low level of antibiotics, and breed. These stronger bacteria have got a name “resistant bacteria” because they’ve accommodated to living with the antibiotics, and so antibiotics cannot destroy them. As a result, traditional antibiotics haven’t got their power in the fight against infectious diseases, they become less effective. Some types of tuberculosis, for example, are now resistant to general antibiotics.

A nice example of antibiotic resistant bacteria is Staphylococcus aureus. This is a highly morbific microbe that causes toxic shock, heart valve infections and skin abscesses. In the USA, almost each type of Staphylococcus aureus has become resistant to penicillin, and some strains of the disease have begun to develop resistance to newer drugs like vancomycin etc. As S. aureus has become much more resistant, a lot of drugs are useless against it. The fear of continuous illness or death from a S. aureus infection has increased considerably.

Antibiotic resistance is in fact a natural phenomenon, but people have immensely speeded up the process by means of antibiotic overuse. Over-prescribing antibiotics for illnesses against which they are useless (the flu or a cold) contributes to antibiotic resistance. It is a well-known fact that antibiotics are also fed needlessly to poultry, and fish to encourage faster growth and to make up for the unhygienic conditions on factories and farms. The growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a chief public health ploblem. It’s very difficult and expensive now to cure infections from resistant bacteria. According to the National Academy of Sciences calculations, 14,000 Americans die every year from antibiotic-resistant infections.

Even though every human will be at risk in case antibiotics stop working, the danger is still greater for people with weak immune systems, such as cancer patients and organ transplant patients. The risk is considerable also for retirees and young children because the immune system functions not that effectively for people of these ages.