The Warning Nobody Heeded

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 and won a Nobel Prize in 1945. In his acceptance speech, he warned that bacteria could become resistant if antibiotics were misused. He had reason to worry: penicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus was already turning up by the early 1940s, even before he gave the speech.

Today, antibiotic-resistant infections kill roughly 1.27 million people per year worldwide, more than HIV or malaria. Fleming's Nobel speech has become one of history's most tragically accurate predictions.