The Idea of an Essay, Volume 2

191 Century staggeringly improved human control over bacterial infection. Since bacteria differ from human body cells in structure and function, “antimicrobial drugs have been developed that can damage or kill the prokaryotic cell with minimal harm to the human host” (Casey 20). In essence, the drug impairs the bacteria’s ability to reproduce and spread. Depending on the specific case, an antibiotic will remove bacteria’s ability to either make its own food, synthesize structural elements, uncoil DNA for replication, or sustain life in other ways. Regardless of the mechanism, the ultimate purpose of an antibiotic is to reduce the bacteria population in the person enough that the body’s immune system can cope with the invasion (Casey 22). Without antibiotics, modern day surgical operations and other treatments would simply be unrealistic because of the risk of bacterial infection, according to Arias and Murray, both professors of medicine at Texas Medical School of Houston (439). Little would be the same in medicine without antibiotics. Unfortunately, antibiotic medication is no longer a “magic pill” that holds the answer to all cases of bacterial infection. Because of their rapid rates of reproduction, bacteria commonly develop genetic mutations in their DNA, and these changes can occasionally cause a benefit to the microbe in its defense against antibiotics (Casey 23). Before the invention of antibiotics, this would not have mattered because the non-mutated bacterium reproduced uncontrollably anyway. However, once antibiotics came into common usage, these mutated bacteria began to outlive the original type and continue reproduction. Over time, the mutated strain would make up the majority of the population, and the antibiotic that had previously been effective would no longer help. Since multiple types of antibiotics can be useful, this may not cause a dangerous situation in the short term. Simply administering a different antibiotic that the bacteria had no resistance to would succeed in controlling it, though perhaps not as effectively. The real problem is that bacteria constantly mutate, and the strain that survives and reproduces more will become the dominant group. This means that if a bacterium mutates again and obtains some sort of mechanism to resist the new drug, the new strain will survive exposure to both antibiotics. Over time, a species of bacteria may build resistance to all relevant antibiotics in this manner and leave an infected patient untreatable. Although this phenomenon of resistance sounds dangerous on a