Defeating the Superbugs
All around us there is an invisible world. The microscopic world of bacteria. Some of these bacteria are going rogue, becoming superbugs that we can’t control.
Scientist “They’re probably smarter than I am. They’re able to adjust far more quickly than I can so they are able to develop resistance a whole lot faster than I can develop an antibiotic.”
Antibiotics are one of the miracles of modern medicine and scientists now worry that superbugs are emerging which are becoming totally resistant to these drugs.
“That’s the scary day, that’s the day when for some unlucky person their day has come, right, that the drugs no longer work.”
But researchers are engaged in a fight-back against the superbugs.
“Bacteria have been on the earth for billions of years, humans have been on the Earth a few hundred thousand years. Right so, they have the accumulated smarts of eons of generations. What we do have, as humans, is we have brains.”
Bacteria gone Rogue
The rise of bacteria resistant to antibiotics is being seen as a major public health threat. So scientists are devising new and sophisticated ways to try to defeat the superbugs.
The demands of patients on GPs for an instant treatment to everyday maladies is putting pressure on a health system and the ubiquitous use of antibiotics, often inappropriately, allows these bacteria to develop resistance to the point that we will no longer be able to treat them in this way.
We have all heard of MRSA, but what is this condition that pervaded the news for such a long time?
Staphylococcus aureus is a relatively harmless bacteria easily treated with an antibiotic called methicillin. However, due to the overuse of this antibiotic, the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus has developed resistance to Methicillin. Hence the name – Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This is no longer a relatively harmless bacteria – it can be a KILLER.
External Links
Stop the Spread of Superbugs – News in Health
