With antibiotic resistance on the rise, what does the future look like?

Over the past 85 years, antibiotics have been miracle drugs. They’ve kept infections at bay and opened up a world of medical possibilities: organ transplants, heart surgery, chemotherapy. But they’re not going to work forever, the slow, inevitable march of evolution means that antibiotic resistance is on the rise.

I spoke with Maryn McKenna and Raj Bhardwaj. McKenna is an independent journalist who has spent many years tracking the rise of antibiotic resistance (enough years that many people refer to her as “scary disease girl”). Her book SUPERBUG: The Fatal Menace of MRSA is about the antibiotic resistant pathogen MRSA, and her next book, about the use of antibiotics in agriculture, will be published next year.

Some of the scenarios we’ve tackled previously on this podcast are really out there—I doubt space pirates will drag a second moon to Earth any time soon. But antibiotic resistance is already happening. In 2013 the CDC published a “threat report” on the status of drug resistance, estimating that every year two million people in the United States become infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria, and at least 23,000 people die from those infections. A group called the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, convened by the UK Prime Minister, came out with a report in December of last year projecting 10 million deaths a year by 2050.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Meanwhile in the Future: When Antibiotics Stop Working

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