New and Sexy Penicillin

Today in lecture the lecturing man mentioned how bacteria manage to develop resistances to any new antibiotics we throw at them. Saying they "manage" to develop resistance is misleading; it is a certainty. That's evolution in action, people. We need to go back to relying on our own immune systems and not so much the sexy new drugs that have been synthesized in sexy new ways to provide millions of chemists with jobs. I'm not anti-science; I'm steadfastly for vaccinating people, for boosting our own immune defenses, a sort of do-it-yourself defense helped and informed by science. Unfortunately, a lot of people have great deals of money invested in the production of drugs, and they're not budging. Nor should they; that's not their responsibility. So, where are we going? We are already a drug culture, saddled with our endless quick-fixes, taking pills to wake up and pills to go to sleep, pills to keep the swelling down and pills to keep the crying down, pills to prolong life in the withered shell of a human form, pills to stop crying about it. I have no solution, but I'm not throwing my hands up in the air just yet.

Maybe the sentient cockroaches millions of years from now will get it right. One thing's for sure: we won't be around to know. But I'm not bitter.

Consider: "AmpD mutants express AmpC constitutively; they are thus greatly favoured in settings rich in third generation beta-lactam antibiotics: clinics, hospitals, old-age homes. It's now a race between our cleverness and hyper-evolution."