How Great Is the Menace?

IN October 1997, Hollie Mullin, a three-week-old baby, contracted an ear infection. When it failed to clear up in a few days, her doctor prescribed a modern antibiotic. It should have been a routine cure, but it wasn’t. The infection returned and continued to do so after each course of antibiotics.

In her first year, Hollie had 17 courses of various antibiotics. Then, at 21 months of age, she got her worst infection. After 14 days of intravenous administration of an antibiotic of last resort, the infection finally cleared up.

Scenarios like this have become increasingly common and not just among babies and the elderly. People of all ages are getting sick and even dying from infections that were once easily cured with antibiotics. Actually, germs that survive antibiotic assault have been a serious problem in some hospitals since the 1950’s. Then during the 1960’s and 1970’s, germs resistant to antibiotics spread into communities.

In time, medical researchers began to cite overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals as the principal cause of the increase in germs that are resistant to antibiotics. In 1978 one of these medical personnel described antibiotic overuse as “completely out of hand.” So by the 1990’s, headlines like the following were appearing worldwide: “Super-bugs Arrive,” “Superbugs Take Hold,” “Dangerous Drugs​—Antibiotic Overuse Is Spawning Superbugs.”

Sensationalism? Not according to respected medical organizations. In a report on infectious diseases in 2000, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) stated: “At the dawn of a new millennium, humanity is faced with another crisis. Formerly curable diseases . . . are now arrayed in the increasingly impenetrable armour of antimicrobial resistance.”

How serious is the crisis? “This disturbing development [of drug-resistant germs] is closing the windows of opportunity to treat infectious diseases,” WHO reported. A number of authorities today even speak of humanity’s return to a “pre-antibiotic age,” when there were no antibiotics for curing infections.

How have resistant microorganisms been able, in effect, to colonize the world, outmaneuvering sophisticated scientific advances? Is there anything an individual can do to protect himself or others? And what solutions are in the offing to combat germs that are resistant to antibiotics? The following articles present some answers.