What Can We Do About Antibiotic-resistant Bacteria?`

Antonio Hindson

Lab Report

You Decide : Antibiotic Resistance

November 10 , 2008

Winning the Micro-War : Prevention and New Drugs

Humans are engaged in a micro-war ' with bacteria , and we are losing Bacteria represent one of the most adaptable organisms on the planet primarily due to their propensity for adopting genetic mutations . As with all evolutionary mechanisms , most mutations are either harmful or neutral they do not provide a comparative advantage to the mutated organism . Other times , however , a mutation will counteract a new and damaging environmental pressure and the organism

will become well-equipped to survive and pass on its genes . This is precisely the problem with antibiotic resistance in bacteria : human antibiotics present a new environmental pressure to the highly-adaptable micro-organisms , and some develop an ability to survive through mutation . That threat is magnified by the horizontal spreading of resistance through plasmid transfer and replication ( Extending the Cure . To mitigate the threat of antibiotic resistant bacteria , three paths must be pursued : prevention and development of new drugs

Because antibiotic resistance arises primarily as an evolutionary response to environmental pressure , antibiotic resistance can be avoided by minimizing the introduction of antibiotics and using them only when truly needed . When antibiotics were first introduced , they were seen as a panacea - and rightly so , as they quickly and effectively treated diseases that had previously been deadly and widespread (Lewis , FDA Unfortunately , however , this enthusiastic adoption of antibiotics has led to a dangerous over-reliance on their use . For example , many dermatologists not only prescribe antibiotics...