Fleming Antibiotics Summary

Hi guys,

Sorry this took so long to put up. Just a summary of the article on Antibiotics. Most of you hopefully got this last thursday if not i'm very sorry.



Introduction
Wikipedia defines Antibiotics as a substance or compound that kills bacteria or inhibits their growth. This chapter gives the history of one of the worlds greatest discoveries – Penicillin. It interestingly shows how its discovery and development came about as a result of several accidents.

Penicillin was first observed by John Tyndall accidentally when he was experimenting with bacteria in 1875. Although he recorded what he observed he did not investigate any further.
Penicillin was then observed by Alexander Fleming in 1928 accidentally when he was experimenting with staphylococcus. Fleming took his study a little further before giving up as he did not think a bacterial infection in the body could be helped by injecting or ingesting a drug.
The study of penicillin was then taken much further by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain at Oxford University. Their findings were published in a paper in 1940. They took the experiments even further and pushed for penicillin to be produced on a large scale.

Consequences and Implications
“Penicillin has forever changed the treatment of infections”. After penicillin other antibiotics were discovered and developed.

Although the benefits of the discovery of penicillin are immense there are some costs involved with the use of penicillin. It was believed by physicians that by the year 2000 tuberculosis would have become as rear as smallpox. But tuberculosis has somehow resisted the usual antibacterial action of streptomycin. Eight million humans a year are infected with tuberculosis and two million of them die.

Also bacteria is becoming resistant to the drugs used to attack them. E.g the % of pneumococcal strains that have become drug resistant was 6.6% in 1994 compared to just 0.02% in 1987.

It has also been said that physicians are giving out antibiotics when they are not necessary to give patients the impression that they are doing something.

Conclusion
Penicillin was discovered as the result of many fortunate accidents. This is definitely a strong theme in this chapter. i.e If this hadn’t accidentally happened then this person wouldn’t have come across this. If penicillin hadn’t been discovered who knows what a difference that would make on the way medicine is practiced today. And who knows how many lives would be lost to bacterial infections that can today be cured by penicillin and other such antibiotics.