How Antiboiotics Have Influence Modern Day Society?

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.

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

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.

Antibiotics differ from many other drugs in the fact that the treatment is for a very short time compared to drugs used to treat hypertension, diabetes, Parkinson’s, or cancer. The latter disorders have in common that the treatment, from the moment of diagnosis, is life-long. The treatment period for antibiotics is only a few weeks, making the return of investment poor. Increasing demands of authorities in both development and marketing phase and in legislation increase the costs of new antibiotics.[1] [3]

The misuse of penicillin and other antibiotics however is causing the growing problem of antibiotic resistance in which seemingly harmless infections turn to be deadly and dangerous. Antibiotics are not only casually used as treatments for bacterial infections, but are also used in agriculture and veterinary medicine, creating controversy on the proper uses of antibiotics. As advancements in the medical fields proved to be beneficial for a short period of time, today the misuse of these innovations are creating more and more problems that have proven to be dangerous to the accustomed health of the global population. Antibiotics were not always considered to be a superficial medication and, in fact, have been naturally used for millions of years, like with ants and their symbiosis with antibiotic producing fungi. Humans do not fully realize the value that antibiotics have brought to the population and do not take measures to preserve their use. In contrast, humans take for advantage the natural benefits that is given to them to overly benefit themselves, such as while creating revenue through mass production despite warning from scientists. This selfish misuse leads to consequences in which the future will have to provide solutions for, and perhaps even follow in the ants’ footsteps.

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 were introduced to people in 1929, which could restrain the normal growth of the other bacteria called antimicrobial activity, was found by British scientist Alexander Fleming by coincidence. Then scientists used antibiotics, to cure injured soldiers and got great success during the World War. With the efforts of many scientists in the past half of the century, thousand kinds of antibiotics are found, which could be natural, semi-synthetic or synthetic, and many of them are used in medical field successfully.

Infections have been around for a very long time. During the 19th century, pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhea and diphtheria were the main causes of death in children and adults (1).” Studies show that in the hospitals alone there have been there have been 1.7 million infections since 2002, 33,269 were newborns in high risk nurseries, 19,059 newborns in well nurseries, 417,946 among adults and children in ICUs, and 1,266,851 children and adults outside of the hospital. There have been 98,987 estimated deaths, 35,967 were for pneumonia and the rest were from other infections (2). Antibiotics also known as antibacterials and antimicrobials, transformed medicine

Antibiotics are a powerful medication that fights bacterial infection. Antibiotics can save lives. Antibiotics specifically treat infections caused by bacteria, such as Staph., Strep., or E. coli., and either kill the bacteria or keep it from reproducing and growing (2016, L. Anderson, PharmD). Your body's natural defenses can usually take it from there. Antibiotics are specific for the type of bacteria being treated and in general, cannot be interchanged from one infection to other. Antibiotics are not the correct choice for all infection. Antibiotics can not fight infection caused by viruses such as cold, flu, coughs, sore throats, or acute sinusitis. Antibiotic penicillin in the 1920s made a big impact on human history. Not only did it lead

The discovery of penicillin, one of the world’s first antibiotics, marked a turning point in human history. Doctors finally had medicine that could completely cure and prevent infectious diseases.

Many people are under the impression that antibiotics will help cure infections including colds, flu, sore throats, bronchitis, sinus infections and ear infections, along with the prevention of spreading illness. This is simply an entirely deceiving impression and alarming news to many. Antibiotics serve a purpose to fight bacterial infections that are harmful to our bodies and for this purpose only, or so they did before the generations of abuse built a resilience making

Infection is a major cause of human suffering. Even relatively minor infections can become more serious, leading to major infection and can, in some cases, lead to patient death. In addition to patient suffering, infection causes distress to family and friends.The costs to the health care system of providing care for those with infections are huge. In addition to concerns over the growing costs to health care, the use of antibiotics to treat these infections is thought to

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).

Antibiotics came into the commercial setting in the 1940s, when penicillin began to be used to treat infections. Shortly after, livestock and poultry farmers began to integrate antibiotics into their conventional farming methods. Now, less than a hundred years later, 70% of all antibiotics that are used in human medicine are also used in agriculture and livestock, while 80% of all antibiotics in the U.S. are used in animals. Although this has increased meat and poultry production and lowered the cost for consumers, we are on a treacherous path to reversing the last 100 years of advanced medical discoveries.