Antibiotics - Doctor's Notes

Medicine, as advanced as it is, has always been the best result of trial and errors. It's a science, not perfection, but as close to perfect as it can get.

As the field of medicine advanced numerous miracle drugs appeared and the quality of life and health has only improved. With the science of drugs and the impact it has on the population and the dependancy on drugs increased, the demand led to the creation of a whole new market and a race of providing the best healthcare while also being economically beneficial.

As medicine is a constantly evolving field of science, we doctors, always have in mind that a procedure or drug used yesterday maybe the worst option today. That is why they say a doctor is forever a student. We have to always keep in touch with the latest advancements and every latest thesis addition to the scientific journal becomes our best friend.

Even after all the advancements in science and how thorough clinical trials have become over the last few years, there is always one factor-rather a variable- no one can control: human behavior.

This factor, human behavior, alone has become one of the biggest reasons of how antibiotics may not be a miracle drug anymore, but rather, a mass murderer.

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In this article I will be generalizing antibiotics for the laymen. There are many subdivisions of antibiotics but they all, in principle, work in the same way.

Antibiotics, when discovered, we're truly a miracle. It was a simple antidote to some of the most complex medical issues. In Med school, our professors used to always refer to them as the miracle makers because of the impact these pills made and the number of lives they had saved. However, over time and with the development of science antibiotics now stand as a threat.

You may not have noticed but, while in practice, we still see the demand and the oversight for antibiotics among patients.

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Antibiotics are medications that work against infectious organisms by either killing or inhibiting the growth. (bacteriocidal or bacteriostatic respectively)
They work by either disrupting the cell wall synthesis of the organism, cell membrane function, protein synthesis (basically starving the organism), nucleic acid synthesis(not letting replication).

These amazing drugs became popular because of how effective they were, and they were advertised heavily by pharma companies, not exaggerating the product but exaggerating the advertisements.

One key thing to remember is that organisms can evolve naturally, drugs cannot. This is the problem science faces today. The overuse of antibiotics have lead to drug-resistant pathogens which have created a threat.

You may have noticed penicillins and cephalosporins have generations. These generations play the role of dealing with specific strains of pathogens or a broad spectrum. As there are drug resistant strains, there has to drug-resistant-resustant-drugs.

But he evolution of infectious, resistant pathogens is a bit faster than medicine can evolve. If this goes on, eventually there will be a super-resistant-bacteria, super pathogen that'll bring everything down.

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How did we come to this?
How do we fix it?
Why is this situation so bad?

Next time.