Antibiotic Resistance
Medicines and AntibioticsPathogens infect the body and, after a while, cause symptoms. people's options are to wait for the white blood cells kick in or they can take medicines (pain killers) to relieve the symptoms. Medicines such as painkillers only relieve the symptoms - they don't effect the pathogens.
Antibiotics are medicines that relieve symptoms, have an effect on bacteria and can actually kill pathogens. These are good but...
If a doctor prescribes too many and too often the bacteria get a lot of exposure to the antibiotics and a mutation occurs (a random, spontaneous change in tis DNA) that causes the bacteria to become antibiotic resistant. This mutation is caused by natural selection. as this new bacteria multiplies, the person ends up with a population of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
scientists are developing new antibiotics that will actually kill that bacteria as opposed to just having an effect on them. These, again should not be prescribed too much.
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