Drug Resistance, Explained
May. 13, 2008 by Lisa Currie
Worried that antibiotic resistance will make you vulnerable to all sorts of infections? It’s important to understand how drug resistance occurs before you start worrying your pretty little head about it. Read this from the New York Times…
People can be forgiven for wondering what difference it makes how we kill microorganisms. After all, soap or bleach kills bacteria, and so does penicillin. So why does it matter exactly how you kill them?
It does matter, and the reason for the consequences of killing bacteria with penicillin or killing them with Ivory has to do with evolution. Furthermore, I suspect that part of the confusion in the mind of the public lies in the use of euphemisms like “develop” and “change through time,” rather than what we really mean, which is evolve.
Bacteria don’t “develop” resistance, as if it were a muscle nurtured by going to a microbial gym. read full article…
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