The Creative Destruction Of Medicine

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.

A couple times a year local and national mass media put the spotlight on problems connected to antibiotic overuse. Some people consider those problems to be real and serious, and others think that the discussed topics are nothing more than new “fashionable” subjects to talk about, distracting people from “real” problems, such as climbing gas prices or war expenses. Meanwhile, antibiotic overuse continues as a common practice among US doctors and agribusinesses for the last 20 years. The practice of antibiotic overuse has put patient’s health at risk, contributed to antibiotic resistance and increased bacterial mutation to a new, stronger level; as well as it hitting the economy with new costly expenses in health care. It is time to stop

Throughout my life, adults have insisted the use of antibiotics to fight against the most inconsequential illnesses, whether it’s the cold or the flu. However, neither illness is due to invasion of bacteria. This misuse can lead to antibiotic resistance, also known as antimicrobial resistance(AMR), currently one of the central issues facing the public health system. While the process for antibiotic resistance occurs naturally through the process of adaptation, the mismanagement of antibiotic resources has accelerated the rate at which the bacteria adapt. The occurrence of this misinformation isn’t limited to a few adults: even some of my peers suggest taking antibiotics when faced with the flu. This leads to asking whether AMR is truly a problem and are present regulations enough to combat the issue.

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.

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.

Antibiotics-resistant organisms have become one of the most serious threats to public health, infecting over two million people and killing approximately 23,000 people annually.1 According to the CDC, “total inappropriate antibiotic use,” such as prescribing unnecessary antibiotics or giving the wrong dose or duration, makes up to 50% of all outpatient antibiotic use,2,3 and in 2009, the United States spent $10.7 billion on antibiotics, indicating that there is a lot of potential money to save.4

It does not take much to look around and see how much medicine has developed over the years. Scenarios involving certain illnesses that at sometime in the past seemed to be hopeless have been studied and treatments carefully developed. Many medical discoveries have been made, and many are the lives that have been spared because of such. On the other hand, however, it is undeniable that there are many forms of physical disorder that still cannot be fully explained by medicine. Extremely knowledgeable researchers and devoted doctors have been grappling with problems such as cancer and AIDS for decades, yet nothing has been discovered or developed further enough to completely cure these and also many other forms of deadly illnesses.

In modern times medicine has been transformed by waves of discovery that have brought marvels like antibiotics, vaccines and heart stents.

The medical community has warned the public that this disaster would occur. Although with all warning nothing has been done to solve this situation. There has been causes from this dilemma. The first cause is the deadly infections that became aggressive. People were so frightened that they began starting to find a cure to the many infections. Now since antibiotics have been discovered it has taken over. It has created the world to become addictive to antibiotics. Antibiotics have led to a large misuse of the medication. “The CDC estimates that half of all antibiotics taken in the US are

Since their introduction, antibiotics have been a major component in the medical field. Scientists are continuing to make advancements in the industry and import the drugs. As the drugs improve, so does the want and need to have them. The advancements have made amazing headway in the fight against different illnesses and have become very important to medicine. Because the positive response of antibiotics and continued growth, people all over the world are searching for this “miracle drug” to treat their illnesses as soon as they come about. In many cases the antibiotics are a great route in the treatment of the illness, but in many other cases the antibiotics are unneeded and causing more harm than good. The poses the question, “Should antibiotic

While antibiotics and vaccines have numerous well-known benefits associated with prevention and recovery, what unfamiliar beneficial effects do they contribute to society? When it comes to the topic of antibiotic and vaccine use, most people will readily agree that medical treatment will greatly reduce the chance of getting ill and will improve recovery time. This agreement usually ends, however, on the question: Are antibiotics and vaccines necessary to maintain a healthy society? Whereas some are convinced that the use of antibiotics and vaccines pose a threat to society by inducing antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria and encouraging virus mutation, others maintain that resistance and mutation will occur naturally, and without advances in treatment these natural changes of pathogens are the cause of devastating epidemics.

Not many can comprehend the true significance of this primary health discovery and the improvements antibiotics has made in the medical community and modern day society. Between 1944 and 1972, life expectancy increased by eight years mainly due to the discovery of antibiotics. Patients would die from the common cold, measles and tuberculosis. In modern day society this can be cured by a simple antibiotic prescription. During the periods 1960 and 2014, population has grown with more than 300 billion people. By combating these general bacterial infections, which proved to be deadly, it is clear that antibiotics have somewhat contributed to population growth.

The abuse of antibiotics is a threat to global health as we approach a post-antibiotic era. As of now, antibiotics are massively used for human prescriptive reasons, as well as for food growth in livestock. As such, without effective antibiotics, health is

The advanced survival mechanisms of bacteria and the increased misuse and lack of understanding with regard to the treatment of bacterial infection links to the fact that antibiotic resistance development is an inevitable fact, within 8-12 years it is believed that bacterial strains can develop multiple drug resistance hence leading to the consequence that virtually no antibiotic is appropriate for the treatment of that specific pathogen, this it not only significant in terms of individual treatment but with respect to a worldwide treatment antibiotic resistance has the potential to drive us back to medieval times, when pneumonia and the black plague were the greatest cause of death due to rapid spread and the inability for the treatment of human disease.

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).