Pre Antibiotic Era

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“Federal officials warned Tuesday that an especially dangerous group of superbugs has become a significant health problem in hospitals throughout the United States.” “A young girl thrust onto life support in Arizona to an uncontrollable outbreak at one of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals.” “Hospitals need to take action against the spread of a deadly, antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” You might be seeing more and more headlines about nightmare bacteria just like these. They say antibiotic resistant bacteria are rapidly becoming more prevalent and the antibiotic era is over. If this is news to you, then it also might be a surprise to know that we are heading towards a true medical …show more content…

During the pre antibiotic era in the early 1900’s the leading causes of death were tuberculosis, enteritis, and multiple strains of streptococcus, all bacterial infections. Equally terrifying was that some of these simple infections were 80% fatal if contracted. However, a breakthrough happened when Alexander fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, even though it wasn’t mass produced until 1939. Thus, the antibiotic era emerged quickly reaching its golden age (1941-1962) where they had 14 novel classes. Most were very optimistic, saying infections have basically been wiped out in America, but some people had their doubts. Flemming even predicted bacteria will develop resistance, and resistance plasmids were discovered in the 1940s but it didn’t seem to matter. After the 1960’s no new classes were being made, only little changes to the 4 remaining classes. It wasn’t until 1999 when a new class was made, so were not very fast at making antibiotics. In summary, the future for antibiotics seemed bright and limitless. However, bacterial evolutionary adaptation always seems to get the better of us in the

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