# Are we destined to enter a "post-antibiotic" era? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 30, 2014, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940 "2014-03-30T23:34:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2014, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940/1 "2014-03-30T23:34:34Z")
> **[When We Lose Antibiotics, Here's Everything Else We'll Lose Too](https://www.wired.com/2013/11/end-abx/)** > > This week, health authorities in New Zealand announced that the tightly quarantined island nation — the only place I’ve ever been where you get x-rayed on the way into the country as well as leaving it — has experienced its first case, and first... The linked article refers to arguments that if things keep going the way they are, we’ll eventually enter an era in which antibiotics will be irrelevant because there will be too many bugs that are completely anti-biotic resistant. I take it the author is advocating for a slowdown in the use of antibiotics for various non-medicine related purposes (and some medicine-related ones as well). One question I have is–isn’t it inevitable that the bugs will eventually get completely resistant no matter how much we slow down antibiotics use? They’ll still develop defenses either way–just maybe more slowly. Another question, though, is what does it mean for an organism to be “completely antibiotic resistant”? Does the term antibiotic mean something other than just “anything that kills microorganisms without killing their host” or something like that? Because if that’s what it means, surely it will always be possible to design a drug that will do just that. They’ll be resistant to all _current_ antibiotics, but is it really reasonable to think they’d be resistant to all _possible_ antibiotics? I am probably speaking from a position of considerable ignorance here… ---
**Author:** ![Canadjun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940/2 "2014-03-31T00:29:47Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Another question, though, is what does it mean for an organism to be “completely antibiotic resistant”? Does the term antibiotic mean something other than just “anything that kills microorganisms without killing their host” or something like that? Because if that’s what it means, surely it will always be possible to design a drug that will do just that. They’ll be resistant to all _current_ antibiotics, but is it really reasonable to think they’d be resistant to all _possible_ antibiotics? I am probably speaking from a position of considerable ignorance here… IANAMD, but I think the problem is that you want something that kills germs without causing major side-effects (or killing) the patient. As germs get more and more resistant it’s going to get harder and hard to find antibiotics that do one without the other. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940/3 "2014-03-31T02:16:45Z")
We may run out of simple chemical compounds that kill infectious bacteria but not human cells; I think we’ll eventually have to develop more sophisticated biotechnology, like custom-engineered bacteriophages, artificial antibodies, and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940/4 "2014-03-31T02:45:24Z")
Read somewhere that antibiotic research really slowed down in the 60s and that if the current crop becomes ineffective it will spur pharmaceutical companies to focus more on this area and design new antibiotics that nothing is resistant to yet. I’m not a doctor or pharmacist, nor have I studied much in this area, so take it for what it’s worth. ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940/5 "2014-03-31T03:12:06Z")
Antibiotics are over-rated anyway. Humanity’s survived without them perfectly fine for 100,000 years, despite bad hygiene, poor diet, and voodoo medicine. It’s not like every cut and scratch was a guaranteed death sentence before the 20th Century. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940/6 "2014-03-31T03:28:20Z")
> [@buddha\_david](#): > > Antibiotics are over-rated anyway. Humanity’s survived without them perfectly fine for 100,000 years, despite bad hygiene, poor diet, and voodoo medicine. It’s not like every cut and scratch was a guaranteed death sentence before the 20th Century. No, but it’s awfully nice to have treatment for even those ailments which aren’t guaranteed death sentences which would wipe out the human race… ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940/7 "2014-03-31T03:45:48Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Read somewhere that antibiotic research really slowed down in the 60s and that if the current crop becomes ineffective it will spur pharmaceutical companies to focus more on this area and design new antibiotics that nothing is resistant to yet. I’m not a doctor or pharmacist, nor have I studied much in this area, so take it for what it’s worth. In some areas, doctors are going back to older antibiotics because they remain effective, thanks to not being in recent use, due to bacterial resistance to newer drugs. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940/8 "2014-03-31T08:21:34Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > One question I have is–isn’t it inevitable that the bugs will eventually get completely resistant no matter how much we slow down antibiotics use? They’ll still develop defenses either way–just maybe more slowly. Having the antibiotic resistance genes comes with a cost for the bug. In an environment without antibiotics it will be selected against. Eliminating or reducing the use of antibiotics will cause the population of antibiotic-resistant bugs to be reduced. That said, there’s an antibiotic panic two or three times a year. Have been so for about as long as I can remember. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940/9 "2014-03-31T08:38:51Z")
[Previous thread on this topic.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=708443&highlight=antibiotics) To quote a poster in that thread; > [@The Post-Antibiotic Age?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-post-antibiotic-age/674499/2): > > The world is full of antibiotics. Every organism on the planet is loaded with antibiotics. We keep finding new ones everywhere we look. > > At the moment, we have so many antibiotics available that there is little research going into fully developing new ones. Most of the current research is very preliminary, sufficient to slap a patent on them. > > Once it looks like there’s a market for new antibiotics, the research will start back up, but at the moment there isn’t really any market for new antibiotics. The old ones work 99% of the time. When they don’t, there’s already a slew of alternatives that work well enough when those don’t. Nobody’s going to go through the expense of licencing a novel antibiotic because there’s just not enough market to justify it. > > The problem isn’t that we are going to run out of antibiotics. The problem is that we might run out of antibiotics that we can cheaply grow in a vat. We’re rapidly running through our list of fungal antibiotics, and those are the easiest to grow. The ones that we can extract from oak trees or walruses work just as well, but they are hard to mass produce. Kinda hard to grow a walrus in a vat. > > However genetic modification will almost certainly allow us to vat-grow many of these antibiotics regardless of the natural source. But that’s a whole new source of expense in developing them, which is why it won’t happen until they can command more than a fraction of a percent of the market. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940/10 "2014-03-31T10:09:57Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > [Previous thread on this topic.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=708443&highlight=antibiotics) > > To quote a poster in that thread; The post you quoted was contradicted by a few medical professionals just a few posts later, and the poster never returned to the thread to provide any requested cites or additional rationale for their opinion. I’m not sure that serves as much of a cite in this thread. Are you saying that you agree with it and if so why? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2014, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-destined-to-enter-a-post-antibiotic-era/684940/11 "2014-03-31T12:33:03Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > The post you quoted was contradicted by a few medical professionals just a few posts later, and the poster never returned to the thread to provide any requested cites or additional rationale for their opinion. I’m not sure that serves as much of a cite in this thread. > > Are you saying that you agree with it and if so why? They actually don’t seem to be directly contradicting each other. (I’m reading **Hirka** ’s post in that thread.) They seem to be agreed that there won’t be a “post-antibiotic age,” **Blake** because we’ll develop new ones when the market demands it, **Hirka** because we can cycle between different antibiotics over the generations.