The use of antibiotics has advantages and disadvantages. Discuss.

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“The use of antibiotics has advantages and disadvantages.  Discuss.”

In 1928 Alexander Fleming after coming home from holiday found (whilst sorting out glass plates with the bacteria staphylococcus) that one of the plates had a blue/green mould on it.  It had a clear ring around it where the bacteria had been dissolved.  The mould was penicillium notatum.  Fleming after some research came to conclusion that a substance coming from the mould must have killed the bacteria, an antibiotic.  The discovery was not noticed at the time, as it was extremely hard to isolate the penicillin but it’s potential was there.  Just as the Second World War had started two Oxford scientists managed to isolate and purify the penicillin in a new interest in the field of anti-bacterial drugs, this was because of the up and coming war.  A programme in the USA saw the mass production and distribution of the drug it was known as the “wonder” drug amongst soldiers.  The extreme effectiveness of antibiotics in destroying harmful bacteria is such a big advantage in using antibiotics, but the chance that one bacterium may have the resistance gene means resistance can be a huge problem.  But in contrast it has been found that the effectiveness of antibiotics can help many in their fight against cancer, with the use of chemotherapy.

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Since 1940s antibiotics have saved millions of lives, they can kill bacteria by preventing its peptidoglycans from synthesising, making the cell burst.  Antibiotics are mostly harmless to humans as the biochemical reactions they target in bacteria are different than in animals.  The New Scientist article source by Alison George describes the three modes of attack of antibiotics on bacterium.  The first has already been described above (cell bursts due to effect on protein synthesis.)  The second form of attack is in targeting the DNA of bacterium by damaging its base sequence therefore the DNA cannot multiply and grow, this ...

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