Glia
12-09-2013, 10:59 PM
Science writer Maryn McKenna explains why the drugs we rely on may soon stop working.
By Indre Viskontas (https://www.motherjones.com/authors/indre-viskontas) and Chris Mooney (https://www.motherjones.com/authors/chris-mooney) | Fri Dec. 6, 2013 3:00 AM GMT
It's flu season. And we're all about to crisscross the country to exchange hugs, kisses, and germs. We're going to get sick. And when we do, many of us will run to our doctors and, hoping to get better, demand antibiotics.
And that's the problem: Antibiotics don't cure the flu (which is viral, not bacterial), but the overprescription of antibiotics imperils us all by driving antibiotic resistance. This threat is growing, so much so that in a recent widely read Medium article (https://medium.com/editors-picks/892b57499e77) [1], Wired science blogger and self-described "scary disease girl" Maryn McKenna (https://www.wired.com/wiredscience/author/maryn/) [2] painted a disturbingly plausible picture of a world in which antibiotics have become markedly less effective. That future is the focus of McKenna's interview this week on the Inquiring Minds podcast:
"For 85 years," McKenna explains on the show, antibiotics "have been solving the problem of infectious disease in a way that's really unique in human history. And people assume those antibiotics are always going to be there. And unfortunately, they're wrong."
Here are some disturbing facts about the growing problem of antibiotic resistance:
continues here (https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/12/inquiring-minds-maryn-mckenna-antibiotic-resistance)
By Indre Viskontas (https://www.motherjones.com/authors/indre-viskontas) and Chris Mooney (https://www.motherjones.com/authors/chris-mooney) | Fri Dec. 6, 2013 3:00 AM GMT
It's flu season. And we're all about to crisscross the country to exchange hugs, kisses, and germs. We're going to get sick. And when we do, many of us will run to our doctors and, hoping to get better, demand antibiotics.
And that's the problem: Antibiotics don't cure the flu (which is viral, not bacterial), but the overprescription of antibiotics imperils us all by driving antibiotic resistance. This threat is growing, so much so that in a recent widely read Medium article (https://medium.com/editors-picks/892b57499e77) [1], Wired science blogger and self-described "scary disease girl" Maryn McKenna (https://www.wired.com/wiredscience/author/maryn/) [2] painted a disturbingly plausible picture of a world in which antibiotics have become markedly less effective. That future is the focus of McKenna's interview this week on the Inquiring Minds podcast:
"For 85 years," McKenna explains on the show, antibiotics "have been solving the problem of infectious disease in a way that's really unique in human history. And people assume those antibiotics are always going to be there. And unfortunately, they're wrong."
Here are some disturbing facts about the growing problem of antibiotic resistance:
continues here (https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/12/inquiring-minds-maryn-mckenna-antibiotic-resistance)