and we're throwing them away through misuse. For decades, people have practically demanded their doctors prescribe antibiotics for just about anything, even viral infections where antibiotics are completely useless. As a result, a whole host of resistant bacteria have emerged. Some are becoming completely immune to even the antibiotics of last resort like Vancomycin (sp).

Years ago, the PBS series "Nova" did an excellent program on the discovery and manufacture of penicillin. One of the interesting historical tidbits from the program was about the first human test subject for the drug. He was a British constable who was dying from blood poisoning. The doctors had very little penicillin to give him and no idea of what was the proper dosage but they gave him the drug anyway. He immediately began to recover. Unfortunately, they ran out of penicillin before he was completely cured. His infection relapsed and he died. The thing that struck me about the case was how he became infected - he'd pricked his finger on a rose thorn. Imagine, a strong man dying from something so trivial.

Are we going to return to those days? It _could_ happen if antibiotic resistant bacteria keeps emerging faster than we can create new drugs. It takes years to develop a new antibiotic. We've got to stop misusing these wonder drugs or the future could be a lot bleaker for all of us. Antibiotics have literally save millions of lives over the past 60 years. Think about it, antibiotics have let us cure formerly incurable or life threatening diseases like TB, leprosy, several venereal diseases, pneumonia, etc. Let's not go back to the bad old days when a simple injury could lead to a life-threatening infection with nothing to stop it.