The Antibiotic Apocalypse Advances…(Downright Scary…)
By Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com
September 20, 2016
The featured video is a fascinating visual demonstration of how bacteria develop resistance to increasingly high doses of antibiotics. In this experiment, E. coli bacteria develop increasing resistance, ultimately surviving antibiotics at a dose 1,000 times higher than they could initially survive, and they do so in a matter of 11 days!
Tami Lieberman, Ph.D., an evolutionary microbiologist at MIT who developed the experiment, told NPR:1
“Getting more people to understand how quickly bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance might help people understand why they shouldn’t be prescribed antibiotics. The drug resistance is not some abstract threat. It’s real.”
Indeed, an estimated 23,000 Americans die each year from drug-resistant infections, and the death toll will continue to rise until or unless the underlying causes are properly addressed.
Sobering Report Predicts Startling Increase in Deaths From Drug-Resistant Illness
According to the largest, most thorough review of the drug resistance problem to date, by 2050 antibiotic-resistant disease will claim the lives of 10 million people around the world each year. As noted by The Atlantic:2
“The report’s language is sober but its numbers are apocalyptic. If antibiotics continue to lose their sting, resistant infections will sap $100 trillion from the world economy between now and 2050, equivalent to $10,000 for every person alive today …
[R]oughly [1 person will die] every [3] seconds, and more than currently die from cancer.
The Rest…HERE
