161–164 of 164 posts
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I was chatting to doctor friend recently who has a masters in this area and he said that in theory yes but it would likely require the bacteria to have a reason to loose the mutation that caused the resistance in the first place so there is no guarantee.
The reason is there: bacteria have to be stingy in how much DNA they devote to anything.
Seriously though, we can forget about getting 7 billion people to use antibiotics safely. Really- forget about it. Not even education helps- after all it's doctors and pharmacists who are primarily responsible for this mess we're in [1].
Our only chance is to find some other way to deal with bacteria -perhaps that phage therapy thing- otherwise we may as well just accept that X million people will die every year because of bacterial infections. Not to mention, of all the conditions that might be safe to treat given antibiotics, but not without them (you know, open heart surgery, brain surgery, that sort of thing).
[1] Here's a childhood memory: my family doctor telling me I have a viral infection ... and prescribing antibiotics. Almost every year until I was 18 and stopped taking the damn things on my own, for entirely irrelevant reasons (I thought they were making me worse) (I got better).
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This is pretty fucking terrifying. A bacterial 'petri dish' of over a billion humans.
India is actually the free world's final exam. Biggest democracy in the world, a population that will soon surpass China, yet it is poor, uneducated, the government is highly dysfunctional. Every year that we fail to help India reach the superpower status hints at chinese-style authoritarianism being a superior model. I wish we would spend more time and effort helping them.