Superbugs: Drug-Resistant Bacteria

Antibiotics have been so effective and so often prescribed that now the germs are fighting back. This is not an academic question, because drug-resistant germs are one of the major health issues facing society today. Deadly diseases that were once banished, like tuberculosis, are now slowly coming back in virulent, incurable form. These superbugs are often immune to the latest antibiotics, leaving the general population helpless against them.

Furthermore, as humanity expands into previously unexplored and unpopulated areas, we are constantly exposed to new diseases for which we have no immunity. So there is a huge pool of unknown diseases waiting to jump out and infect humanity.

Some believe that the large-scale use of antibiotics in animals has accelerated this trend. Cows, for example, become breeding grounds for drug-resistant germs because farmers sometimes overadminister antibiotics in order to increase milk and food production.

Because of the threat that these diseases may come back stronger than ever, there is an urgent need for a new generation of antibiotics that are cheap enough to justify their cost. Sadly, there has been no development of new classes of antibiotics for the last thirty years. The antibiotics that our parents used are about the same ones we use today. One problem is that thousands of chemicals must be tried in order to isolate a handful of promising drugs. It costs about $2 to $3 billion to develop a new class of antibiotics by these methods

(From Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Revolution will Change Everything, by Michio Kaku)