Summary

     Since the discovery and release of penicillin, we have been living in a "golden age" of antibiotics. Bacteria were no longer a threat, and in combination with widespread vaccination and great strides in sanitation and medical technology, infectious diseases that had tortured and purged humanity for eons could be purged from your body after a visit to your physician, the pharmacy, and a few days of antibiotics.

     However, this was the beginning of an arms race between humanity and bacteria; an arms race that humanity had entered guns-blazing, giving itself the upper hand, at least for a while. The antibiotic pipeline was flowing, but resistant bacteria always appeared. The chart above shows the time between the release of major classes of antibiotics and the first appearance of resistance . The chart begins with penicillin's discovery in 1943, but note the gap in the chart; this is because no new classes of antibiotics have been discovered since then. The pipeline has run dry, but resistant bacteria is becoming more and more prevalent.

     Though bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics by natural means (penicillin resistant bacteria existed before the discovery of penicillin), the mass use and over-use of antibiotics creates massive selective pressure for bacteria to become resistant, speeding up the evolutionary process, and increasing the abundance of "superbugs". These "superbugs" kill 90,000 people anually in the United States[4]