Forum Post: Antibiotics

Pharmaceuticals

We face an immediate crisis in medicine worldwide. We can not live without bacteria and yet we are vulnerable to bacteria via infection. Bacteria which is present in a healthy human body can become deadly when immune systems are depressed or overworked! Either due to physical injury or attack by a disease, or even when suppressed by drugs designed to treat cancer. One of the main reasons for the explosion in world population in the latter half of the 20th century was due to the discovery and development of antibiotics. Simple bacterial infections which would have defeated the bodies immune system, and resulted in death, became minor ailments which were easily treated. However, any evolutionary biologist will tell you that cells which divide most frequently have the most accelerated rate of evolution. Every time a bacterial cell divides it has the possibility to produce a mutation in its genetic structure which will provide a resistance to something which was deadly to the preceding generation. In the right conditions, some bacteria undertake cell division in minutes, not hours, providing multitudes of possible generational mutations every day! This is irrefutable fact!