My own google search suggests that it can, but whats the straight dope. Say if Bacteria “B” becomes resistant to Antibiotic “A” and A is withrawn from general use for many years, would the fact that this pressure is no longer being applied to B result in new generations which are not resistant and then making A effective again?
Absolutely.
So why cannot we avoid the resistance problem by putting resisted anti biotics in reserve and reusing them about 10 years later.
How would you enforce that procedure on a global scale?
I am talking about the technical, not the logistic, legal, financial and other hurdles.
I take it you’re more of an idea person, then? 
Technically, well, I’d say go for it. Should work.
Wouldn’t the WHO help out in that regard? Forgive me if I’m being naive, but doesn’t the WHO help steer world medical policy to some extent?
This may have happened in some way, but I can’t recall the details. Some antibiotics have made comebacks after falling into disuse, but I don’t know if it’s because of bacteria losing resistance. I’m sure there are cases where deprecated antibiotics were found to be effective in new circumstances.
I am most definitely not a microbiologist, pharmacologist, doctor, etc. etc. etc., but I wonder if it would take a lot longer for resistance to disappear than it did to appear in the first place. Resistance appears because of evolutionary pressure (right?) - those particular germs that develop resistance through mutation, gene sharing, etc. are more likely to survive and produce more germs some of which have even more resistance… Once the antibiotics in question are no longer used, unless there are negative consequences to having those resistance genes there would be no reason for the resistance genes to disappear in any reasonable length of time. Or, am I missing something?
No, I think that’s spot-on. Depending on the mechanism of resistance, some will be (however slightly) disadvantageous and will disappear, others won’t except by chance.
I don’t know. Does the WHO have any authority to compel, say, the FDA to take a drug off the market?
The WHO? No, of course not; they’re an international NGO and the FDA is a US governmental regulatory authority. They could advise it, but they certainly could not mandate it. The CDC might be a better actor for the US, but they probably can’t mandate it either.
To elaborate a bit:
In the medium term, there’s some “chance” that any neutral gene will either spread through the population or be lost entirely.
In the very long term, “chance” will remove any antibiotic resistance gene that provides no selective advantage. In the absence of purifying selection, neutral mutations will accumulate to the point where the gene is non-functional.
Of course, antibiotic resistance genes are natural, since they’re defense mechanisms in the ever present microbial chemical warfare. I recall one anecdote where some microbiologist was trying to determine the prevalence of resistance genes in soil bacteria. The first soil sample they tested contained some bacteria that were resistant to each and every known antibiotic, including completely synthetic antibiotics that only existed in drug development labs.
So even if we manage to eliminate resistance in human pathogens by stopping antibiotic use, those genes will exist somewhere else. And since bacteria swap genetic material so promiscuously, once we start using antibiotics pathogens will again evolve resistance.
There can be negative consequences for bacteria to antibiotic resistance. If an antibiotic acts on a given protein, resistance can be acquired by altering that protein, but the altered protein may not be as effective at its job as the original when antibiotics are not present. So if the antibiotic “threat” is removed, non-resistant bacteria will out-compete resistant ones.
Not to mention that people working relief medicine in third world countries (or at medical clinics in poor, underserved areas of the US, for that matter) are going to use what they can get. That often means the cheapest antibiotics or donated medicine; they’re not going to refuse anything that can save a life.
It’s a human drive to help people, and a very strong one in the people who choose this line of work. Even if you know that this antibiotic has resistance issues, if you have it in your hand and you’re looking into the big round eyes of 6 year old with an infection, it’s awfully, awfully hard not to give it just because it might cause a theoretical problem down the road.
Yes, theoretically, we should probably withhold a lot of antibiotics and let the bacteria population return to pre-antibiotic physiology. But it ain’t gonna happen. Better to focus our efforts on raising awareness of the things that people do to increase resistance, like not taking their full course of antibiotics, or using someone else’s antibiotic prescription, or using antibiotics when they have a viral illness. These are things that can be stopped *without *increasing deaths due to infection in the short term, and may reduce antibiotic resistance in the long term.