Vanquished

A troubling thing with antibiotics is that the resulting resistance in the bacterial strain means resistance develops.  That's all well and good if it's something that's not life threatening such as an ear infection, but it's another matter entirely when it comes to septicemia or an infection of the blood.  Penicillin, once the savior of mankind from maleficent microbes is now practically useless because so many common strains of bacteria.

The most troubling thing is that we know about this and do very little to prevent it.  The most effective way is to ensure that people take the full dose of their antibiotics even after they feel better.  That means that the strains of a bacterium that are partially resistant to an antibiotic don't spread and lead to strains that are immune.  Further, doctors prescribe antibiotics for things that aren't curable by such means, such as colds, which are viral infections because when people go to the doctor's office they expect to leave with something, even for self-limiting issues.

Instead of solving the problems we have through better management practices we place our faith in the development of new and better antibiotics.  Unfortunately, that's an arms race that we have no guarantee of maintaining.  Initially, vancomycin was the end all be all of antibiotics and was supposed to be used only as a last resort.  Now, it's used commonly in hospitals and that means that resistance to it is growing.  Already, there are strains of MRSA, or super resistant staph, that are also resistant to vancomycin.  Fortunately we've since developed some new antibiotics, but it's only a matter of time before those become ineffective as well.

One has to wonder how long it will take before we no longer have any effective antibiotics.  Given the current circumstances, we can only hope that our advancement of pharmaceuticals continues to outpace the development of resistance.