As living organisms, bacteria are encoded by DNA, and DNA occasionally mutates. Sometimes genetic mutations render a bacterium immune to an antibiotic’s chemical tactics. The few cells that might escape antibiotic pressure then have a sudden advantage: with their counterparts wiped out, resources abound, and the remaining antibiotic-resistant bacteria proliferate. It’s a problem not only for the host—you or me when we are treated with an antibiotic and develop a resistant strain—but also for anyone with whom we happen to share our resistant bacteria, say, on a door handle or keyboard. In fact, most resistant bacteria develop not in people but in livestock fed antibiotics to promote growth; these resistant bacteria infect people through contaminated animal products. This is how even antibiotic “naive” people come to be infected with resistant strains of bacteria.

I see this all the time as a family doctor. A woman has a urinary tract infection. I tell her that her bacteria are resistant to this or that antibiotic, and she says, “But I’ve never taken any of those.” Welcome to the global human soup.

  • girlfreddyOP
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    3 months ago

    The US still allows Bayer to monopolize GMO seeds and herbicide in America, so it ain’t doing all it can do.

    And the EU recently allowed Round-Up GMO seeds and herbicide usage … so not that good either.

    • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      Monoculture farming probably isn’t helping this either, if anything it makes it worse as a blight affecting a specific plant now hits harder. The US learned absolutely nothing from the dust bowl and has entire states full of corn and cows.