OT Doctors- Why do we become immune to antibiotics?

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Department of Defense is involved

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They about to nuke her?

B/c life will find a way.

Jurassic Park should have taught you this.

eta: the real answer. Bacteria have the ability to share defense mechanism genes with each other. Say you have a table full of bacteria and wipe out the whole table with a certain antibiotic. Soon a bacteria will mutate with defense mechanisms against it and take over the table no matter how much antibiotic you throw at it.

It's evolution at work. Not all of the bacteria may be killed by the antibiotic, so the ones that survive live and pass on the ability to survive the treatment.

Antibiotics are overly prescribed in my opinion, but I'm no doctor.

The bacteria does. I used that word out of ignorance as to how they work.

The fact that they eventually become ineffective is what is alarming. I wanted to know why.

ELY5 because apparently you are.

Antibiotics kill bacteria. This was discovered in 1928 (and you're just now finding out about it! how exiting!).

Their success depends on the type of antibiotic you use. But in general they break down the bacterium's cell walls.

We don't develop an immunity to antibiotics, the bacteria do. This is why the immunity is so dangerous - it means that you are now at risk of dying just from a simple cut to your hand.

The bacteria develop immunity because... wait for it... evolution. The bacteria that aren't totally killed by the antibiotics live on and pass their traits to their offspring which are now just a little bit stronger against the medicines. Only, bacteria go through generations very very quickly, so while it make take you forever to evolve, it only takes them a few days.

Now, see what a 10th grade education can do for you? Stay in school, one day you'll know this stuff too.

We do not develop immunity - the bacteria do. This is just evolution in full display: amongst the billions of bacteria some are more resistant and they live and pass on their resistant DNA to future generations. This is a war of escalation that we have no chance of winning.

It's only going to get worse.

Practicing primary care and good medicine often don't coincide nowadays because people expect antibiotics. Midlevel providers are some of the worst offenders of this.

So is the proliferation of antibiotics something the government addresses at a macro level?

Are there rules and regulations about prescribing them? Seems like you'd want to control how much gets disbursed to the population.

There are zero rules or regulations for antibiotics.

ETA: And R&D for new antibiotics is severely lacking. We come up with way more new cancer meds and antivirals.

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There are zero rules or regulations for antibiotics.

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Not to mention how easy it is for people to get antibiotics without a prescription in Mexico(law states you have to have a prescription...but isn't always enforced).