Antibiotics Under Siege

The chemistry of antibiotics carries hard lessons for public health:

• Antibiotics kill bacteria, not viruses - taking them for a cold or flu only adds needless antibiotic exposure
• Follow the prescription you were given - course length depends on the infection, and both stopping too soon and taking antibiotics longer than needed can cause harm
• Agricultural overuse is huge - in many countries, most antibiotics go to livestock, not people
• New discovery has stalled - no major new class of antibiotic has emerged since the 1980s

We are in a race between bacterial evolution and human chemistry.