How Did We Mess up Antibiotics?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2018
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Warnings about the approaching post-antibiotics apocalypse have been sounding for years. There are now strains of deadly bacteria that are resistant to all antibiotics. This means that doctors are faced with patients who have completely untreatable infections. Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are dying due to antibiotic resistance - and this number is set to rise rapidly. If we carry on like this, scientists predict we will return to a pre-antibiotic era, where organ transplants, chemotherapy and C-sections are impossible.
We have come a long way since 1928, when the famous chance discovery of penicillin led to a golden age in which antibiotics were seen as wonder drugs, heralding in an age of huge medical advances and increased human life spans. But by the 1990s we were running out of new antibiotics and infections were again a killer. How did this happen?
Our expert witnesses are medic and historian, Dr Eric Sidebottom, Dr Scott Podolsky of Harvard Medical School, journalist Maryn McKenna and infectious disease specialist Brad Spellberg.
(Photo: A depiction EHEC bacteria. Credit: HZI/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me, |
| 0:03.1 | Helena Merriman. Each week, one question, four expert witnesses, and an answer. |
| 0:10.3 | Rebecca Losen was a brilliant swimmer. She was on the team at her high school in New Jersey in the US, |
| 0:16.0 | and as her mum describes it, she could swim 20 laps of the pool and still have enough air to talk to you when she got out. One spring a few |
| 0:25.0 | years back when Rebecca was 17 years old she went on a short trip with her family. |
| 0:29.3 | When she got home she said she had a sore throat, not much to worry about. |
| 0:34.0 | But the next day it turned into a fever. |
| 0:36.3 | The doctor thought it was glandular fever, but the day after that, she went downhill. |
| 0:47.4 | In hospital they were given the final diagnosis. |
| 0:55.0 | She had methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, otherwise known as MRSA. insulin resistant to a whole range of of antibiotics. |
| 0:56.0 | It's a kind of bacteria that's resistant to a whole range of antibiotics. |
| 1:00.0 | At first, the doctors were optimistic, but she got weaker and weaker. |
| 1:07.0 | Spring past, then summer. By then she was barely conscious. |
| 1:13.0 | She had 12 drips running into her. |
| 1:16.0 | Her birthday came and went. |
| 1:18.0 | And then four months after she'd caught MRSA, |
| 1:21.0 | Rebecca died. |
| 1:31.0 | She's one of hundreds of thousands of people all over the world who die each year from infections which are resistant to antibiotics. |
| 1:34.2 | It's why antibiotic resistance is now described by government scientists |
| 1:38.8 | with one of the greatest threats of the 21st century. |
| 1:41.5 | This week we're going to tell you the story of how we reach |
| 1:45.8 | this point. We'll be asking how did we mess up antibiotics. One, Wonder Drug. |
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