World leaders have finally taken heed of the evidence that mutant bacteria resistant to all known antibiotics threaten the basis of modern medicine. The General Assembly of the United Nations last Wednesday discussed the crisis, recognising that the impact potentially threatens major outbreak of disease in humans population and the collapse of global food production. Antibiotics are regularly fed to industrially farmed animals to reduce the diseases rampant in the crowded and unhygienic conditions in which meat is produced. A recent experiment at Harvard Medical School graphically demonstrates the speed at which bacteria mutate to overcome resistance to anti-biotics.
‘We’re Running Out of Time,’ World Leaders Finally Commit to Tackling Superbugs
We are losing our ability to treat infections. It threatens our whole ability to handle patients and our ability to grow enough food. “It’s clear that if we don’t begin to reverse it now, it’s going to be much harder in the future”. Antibiotics are overused when they are taken for viral infections like colds and flu, and when they are given as growth promoters in animals and fish.