When will we run out of effective antibiotics?

There are already disease organisms that are resistant to every known antibiotic - so how long until they all are?


Asked by: Anonymous

There are already disease organisms that are resistant to every known antibiotic. If we do nothing, we can expect this resistance to spread to many more species of bacteria within the next ten years. Antibiotic research is an arms race – we must constantly develop new drugs to keep up with the rapid evolution of bacteria. Unfortunately antibiotic research has markedly declined in the last 25 years as a result of legislative and economic barriers to developing these drugs so bacteria are currently gaining the upper hand. We can never win the war on bacteria entirely but we will need to invest a good deal more effort in research if we want to continue to hold them at bay.

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