"A new pattern of antibiotic resistance that is spreading around the globe may soon leve us defenseless against a frighteningly wide range of dangerous bacterial infections."
Biological conundrum reveals the evolutionary power of natural selection
"A new pattern of antibiotic resistance that is spreading around the globe may soon leve us defenseless against a frighteningly wide range of dangerous bacterial infections."
methicillin resistance in the 1980s and vancomycin resistance in the 1990s.
"With no new medications in the pipeline capable of dispatching these latest superbugs, we may have to live with the risk of untreatable infections for an uncomfortably long time."
"The 83 year battle between bacteria and the drugs created to kill them . . . .For almost every antibiotic developed to date, bacteria have evolved a resistance factor that protects them from the drug's attack. For almost every resistance factor, pharmaceutical companies have produced a tougher new drug–until now."
"Bacteria all have evolution on their side."
p. 50.
"Typically a few bacteria with random fortunate mutations survive an antibiotic's attack. They reproduce, filling in the living space that the antibiotic cleared for them by killing their susceptible brethren and passing on the genes that protected them."
p. 50.
Maryn Mckenna,"The Enemy Within," Scientific American. April 2011, pp. 47-53.
"The deadly source
The bacterial trafficking in genes is so common that antibiotic expert Stuart Levy writes that "the entire bacterial world can be thought of as one huge multicellular organism in which the cells interchange their genes with ease."
See: http://whyfiles.org/shorties/090antibio_resist/
conundrum, a confusing, particularly difficult, or challenging problem; hard question. [English 16th & 17th century].
"filling in the living space," ecology: the relation of organisms or species to their surrounding conditions of life.
