Anne Penicillin

Since the introduction of penicillin to the public in 1942, antibiotics have gained widespread use throughout the world. The drug has allowed society to make advancements in medicine, increase an individual’s personal well-being, extend life expectancies, and stop and prevent infections. Antibiotics are one of the largest backbones to maintaining personal health in society today, yet there may be a day when we are no longer able to depend on antibiotics to fight infections. In the essay “Imagining the post antibiotic future”, Maryn McKenna establishes the importance of antibiotics to juxtapose how devastating life would be without them.

“Penicillin is effective in lowering mortality in gas gangrene after adequate excision of devitalized tissue, but is relatively ineffective without such supportive surgical excision. This final appraisal of penicillin therapy for gas gangrene received British and American concurrence.” Penicillin was successful in treating gas gangrene, something physicians would have said “impossible” in 1914, during The First World War. Then, the only thing doctors could do was watch their patients die as they succumbed to their infections. Now, because of penicillin, there was a way to save them, and that is why penicillin was so important. The fact that the Allies were the only ones who had access to it added to its significance. Also, the fact that the Allies tried as hard as they did to prevent Germany from getting it

Before 1928, infections such as pneumonia and gonorrhea were untreatable, and many died of blood poisoning due to lesions that are considered minor in modern times. There were no known antibiotics that could kill the bacteria that caused such infections, so people would die of minor illnesses, such as strep throat. However, Alexander Fleming noticed something odd in one of the petri dishes at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, and this seemingly insignificant observation would revolutionize the field of medicine. He was cultivating strains of the Staphylococcus bacteria, and he found that there were not any bacteria colonies growing near a patch of mold in the dish. After looking more into this finding, Alexander Fleming learned that the mold was actually a strain of Penicillium notatum, and it had the capacity to kill malign bacteria like streptococcus, meningococcus

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.

As the world’s population continues to grow exponentially, the area of arable farmland shrinks. As a result, new techniques in agriculture have been developed in order to produce more food using less land. Many of these techniques are considered innovative but come at the cost of the environment or human morality. One example, the large-scale use of antibiotics in livestock feeding, has become a staple of the American agriculture industry. Of all the agricultural advancements the industry has made since the days of the horse and plow, none has been as threatening to human health as the use of sub therapeutic levels of antibiotics (Schneider). Antibiotics are useful for sick animals, just as they are useful for sick humans. In the

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.

Many people have died in the past due to infectious diseases. A human with an infection creates another organism which reproduces inside them. Like the pest, one of the most famous diseases killed millions of people in the 14th century. The only way to kill or stop the growth of an infection or bacteria is with antibiotics. The first antibiotic ever created was the penicillin and the greatest one till now. This drug was discovered by Alexander Fleming in the 1920´s but it was introduced in the 1940´s. Scientist began testing penicillin on lab rats but eventually, it was tested in humans. A man contracted a severe infection from a scratch on his face and Penicillin was given to him where he improved dramatically. After World War II, scientists

The war against bacteria and their ability to evolve at a much faster rate than humans can create antibiotics (a medicine that hinders and disrupts bacterial growth and or destroys it) to fight against them has the human race at a disadvantage. With more and more bacteria being found to have strains of drug-resistant chains is creating a health crisis around the world as global health officials try to find a way to protect their populations against this up and coming threat, and the issues it poses for the future of medicine and treatment of infections. Due to increased use of antibiotics in unneeded situations, bacteria are having more chances to let mutations that are immune to antibiotics be spread through other bacteria. This is causing more cases of antibiotic resistant bacteria and increasing the number of them. Drug resistance results in higher costs due to longer hospital pays and more expensive antibiotics, need for supervision, patient education, and new drug developments.

One of the greatest advances in the medical field that are within the microbiology area was the discovery of the penicillin in the 1940s by Alexander Fleming, Professor of Bacteriology at St. Mary's Hospital in London. Although the initial recognition of its therapeutic effects occurred in the United Kingdom, the United States are the ones that turned this limited substance into a widely available medicine by developing a large-scale production of this life-saving

Millions of lives are saved every single day because of antibiotics treating common infections, allowing organ transplants, as well extending the average lifespan by decades. About half of the emergency cases treated in the intensive care units in the video “Antibiotic Resistance—Catalyst” are suffering from bacterial infections as well as coming to terms that it is no longer treatable, because bacteria are rapidly becoming resistant to all the antibiotics we have. By overusing this incalculable medical resource, we are basically risking the loss the potency of antibiotics, which is a threat to the human race.

In 1928, when Dr. Alexander Fleming (Fleming, 1928) inadvertently discovered the antibacterial – penicillin, he forever changed medical history. Infections were no longer a terminal diagnosis; rather this miracle anti-microbial would decrease the period of illness and exterminate the pathogenic bacteria, thus saving many patients’ lives. But in the brief period of four years following drug companies’ mass-producing of penicillin in 1943, bacterial microbes began to show resistance to drugs (American Chemical Society, 1999).

Humans have come to rely on antibiotics for almost every illness known to man. The use of antibiotics has saved thousands of lives. However, our reliance upon antibiotics may have to come to an end because, the bacteria that we use antibiotics on have begun to evolve. This is not a mere epidemic. These are not just localized cases. This is a prevalent change all throughout the world. I can only picture two ways to overcome this attack. One way is the reduction of antibiotic use. The other method is that we need to create new and improved antibiotics to surpass the evolved bacteria. Marcelino Campos believes that, antibiotic resistance is a serious issue in which our medical systems need to find a solution (1). Understanding why antibiotic resistance

As a surgical Technologist in the Operating room, I have witnessed first hand the destruction and suffering that bacteria can have on the body. Some infections only cause minor discomfort and inflammation. Other bacteria such as streptococcus can cause horribly debilitating diseases such as Necrotizing Fasciitis1. I have also seen that bacterial resistance can play a central role in the outcome of a patient and their future life. Resistance can even determine if a person lives or dies from a bacterial infection. This is in no way more present to me than in the life of my grandmother who, through years of diabetic complications and treatment, is now left with less than a handful of antibiotics that will work to treat her conditions. Dr. Keiji Fukuda of the World Health Organization said it best, “Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill.”2 With how many people that have infections today, the topic of antibiotics is of utmost importance. The aim of this paper is to look at the history of antibiotics, how they work and why they are not working now, and the possibility of better antibiotics in our future.

Bacteria have been plaguing mankind throughout all of recorded history, from the medieval bubonic plague to the leprosy epidemic, but our greatest bacterial nightmare is knocking on the door of the 21st century. Antibiotic resistance. Our improper and ubiquitous use of antibiotics has caused bacteria to develop resistance against our synthetic poison, enabling bacteria to survive, thrive, and reek havoc amongst humans and animals alike. The improper use of antibiotics foreshadows a future of super bacteria that will be incurable by any medicine that has been developed, or will ever be develop. It will be a future full of fear and death. The improper usage of antibiotics must be identified and addressed before it is too late.

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).