Scary Stories of Drug Resistance

A brief history of antibiotics and the resistance to them, resistant TB and resistance to Triclosan (antibacterial soap).

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I write often about irresponsible antibiotic use. But I want to make one thing clear: antibiotics are critical, life-saving and health-improving drugs. In the U.S., every year roughly two million people contract hospital-acquired infections (this ignores infections contracted outside the…
“Millions of Americans use antibacterial hand soap and body wash products. Although consumers generally view these products as effective tools to help prevent the spread of germs, there is currently no evidence that they are any more effective at preventing illness than washing with plain soap and…
A huge number of antibiotic prescriptions are filled due to the misdiagnosis of sore throats. Here's something from the archives about this problem while I'm away. A long-standing complaint by many microbiologists has been the mistreatment of sore throats in children. Antibiotics are often…
...or at least, I was mentioned in Cell. Currently, we have very few new antibiotics in the pipeline, particularly for Gram-negative bacteria such as Acinetobacter. One of the things I'm involved with is a project to develop a not-for-profit screening library to find new antibiotics. From Cell:…