Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria

1636 Words4 Pages

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.
In the documentary, Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria, reporter David Hoffman investigates this new untreatable infection along two individuals and a bacterial virus within a hospital. The first individual Hoffman investigates is Addie Rerecich of Arizona, she was treated for a staph infection with antibiotics, but other complications arise. Addie had a lung transplant, she was given several different antibiotics, but her body became pan-bacteria, non-resistance to the bacteria. Addie’s life was on the edge, she had to be on life support, and finally she received new lungs. The transplant helped Addie but it would take years before could go back to normal before the infection. The second individual is David Ricci; he had his leg amputated in India after a train accident. The antibiotic treatment he received became toxic to his body increasing problems. While in India, he underwent surgery almost every day because of infections he was developing. Back in Seattle, doctors found the NDM-1 resistance gene in his body; NDM-1 gene is resistance to almost all antib...

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...ine. 2013. .
Friedman JF, Lee GM, Kleinman KP, Finkelstein JA. "Acute Care and Antibiotic Seeking for Upper Respiratory Tract Infections for Children in Day Care: Parental Knowledge and Day Care Center Policies." JAMA Pediatrics 157.4 (2003): 369-374. .
Maanvi Singh. "Despite Many Warnings, Antibiotics Are Still Overprescribed." NPR (2013). .
McKenna, Maryn. "Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future." Medium (n.d.). 17 5 2014. .
—. "When We Lose Antibiotics, Here’s Everything Else We’ll Lose Too." Weird (2013). .

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