Peak Antibiotics
Aug 15th, 2010 by David in Society, The Future of Medicine
Probably more than anything else, the discovery of antibiotics heralded the age of modern medicine, enabling the eradication of heretofore deadly diseases. Coinciding as it did with the rise of oil use and oil-dependent technologies, and the industrial-technological-scientific-futurist mindset, it seemed to mark a permanent change in the way diseases were treated.
But the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way.
An article in the Guardian begins,
Just 65 years ago, David Livermore’s paternal grandmother died following an operation to remove her appendix. It didn’t go well, but it was not the surgery that killed her. She succumbed to a series of infections that the pre-penicillin world had no drugs to treat. Welcome to the future.
The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight.
Hyperbole? Unfortunately not. The highly serious journal Lancet Infectious Diseases yesterday posed the question itself over a paper revealing the rapid spread of multi-drug-resistant bacteria. “Is this the end of antibiotics?” it asked.
The crux, of course, is that all living things adapt to stresses. As modern medicine began to rely more and more on its “magic bullet” of antibiotics, it was inevitable that some bacteria would evolve strategies to survive the onslaught.
And they have. First it was MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant strain of staphylococcus that got hospitals in a panic. Now it’s another one called NDM 1. The general trend of resistance to antibiotics is spreading.
Have we reached Peak Antibiotics? Read the full post