World News

22097 readers

134 users here now

Breaking news from around the world.

News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.

Guidelines for submissions:

Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.

For US News, see the US News community.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Commentary: We face a world potentially running out of antibiotics (www.channelnewsasia.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Running out" is a bit of a weird title here, it doesn't mean that some deposit is running dry. There are more and more bacteria getting resistant for more and more types of antibiotics, making them no longer effective. Even a bottomless supply of antibiotics is useless if it doesn't actually kill the things it's supposed to kill.

I suppose the "running out" part would mean that there are only so many types of antibiotics, if none of them are effective anymore (or not enough of them are effective enough) we would be in some deep shit.

(being in deep shit may cause a severe risk of bacterial infection, I highly recommend not being in such a situation)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So this has been reported for years now. We aren't running out of antibiotics. We are running out of options like you said. The real reason is that doctors would prescribe stronger antibiotics than were needed. Also, people would stop taking the full course because they felt better before then, and lastly, farms give antibiotics to their animals just in case, so any bacteria that would survive any of these is allowed to reproduce and become resistant to antibiotics.