going off wet1's point in an earlier post, if modern day antibiotics do not catch up soon we are in serious trouble. Antibiotic soaps and such are creating resistant bacteria everywhere, mostly in the nosocomial section (wet1). Where do we go from here? N. gonorhoeae (sic), M. tuberculosis (sic) etc is becoming resistant and many others. What will you do? Do we pour more money into research? Are not enough people worried about this problem to make changes?
They're still just germs. We can always quarantine and neutralize any of em that we find, that's the best solution I can offer if we run out of antidotes.
Nop, they are the same - kills bacteria. One reason for bateria to become increasing resistant to antiotics are that the people who is taking it don't take the required dose. They take them a for while but stops after the symptoms stops, it is required to finished the whole antibiotics to kill any remaining bacteria. It is those remaining bacteria that are some what resistant to the antibiotics, if we stop mid-way, we are giving them a chance of survival and therefore became resistant to the antibiotics after they grow and multiply. May be some educational programs would help.
bacteriophages next step...bacteriophages...like the russians had been doing before the iron curtain fell...although phages don't seem to be suited for every application. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Hevene: Antibiotics attack certain strains of microbe... hence different antibiotics are more effective against different bugs. Antibacterial soap is a disinfectant, with adhesive properties so that when you rinse/dry you hands, the microbes are removed along with the water. Incidentally, it's way better to use a paper towel after washing with pink gas-station variety antibacterial soap, because using a hand dryer doesn't remove the bacteria stuck in the soap...they just dry right back onto your hands. Pretty gross.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/question692.htm, triclosan is a antibiotic and it is in most of the antibacterial soaps. Walker is right, that certain antibiotics attack different bacteria, but also attach different processes in each one, for instance, some stop the synthesis of the gram + peptidoglycan layer around it making it more susceptible to attack. But w/ these antibacterial soaps, people are not leaving the soap on long enough for the antibiotic to take effect, they say triclosan takes up to 2 minutes to exert its effect, this creates resistence among them, selecting a mutation that is viable under the circumstances and it proliferates
Also, once we get our hands on some solid nanotechnology we should be able to neutralize most or every disease in existence, and not have to worry about any more. We can just program the little buggers to blast the other buggers away with little laser guns. Awesome!
Come up with new antibacterial stuff. Stop using old stuff. Eventually resistance to the old stuff will fade and you can start using it again. In a while perhaps nanotech will help. No bacteria can help being torn to shreds be a mechanical monster or ever develop a resistance.
