Essay on the Profound Effects of Antibiotics on Human Life and Health

This essay delves into the transformative impact of antibiotics on human health and the potential consequences of a world without them. It highlights how the invention of antibiotics has revolutionized the treatment of bacterial infections, significantly increasing life expectancy and enabling advanc...Read More

Running head: ESSAY
Essay
Name of the Student
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Author Note

1ESSAY
A bug’s life: How different would a world without antibiotics be?
An antibiotic is referred to a type of antimicrobial substance that are active against
bacteria and is considered to be one of the most effective antibacterial agent that posses the
potential to fight bacterial infections. Antibiotic medicines are widely used in order to treat as
well as prevent bacterial infections. Antibiotic either kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria that are
causing diseases in the human body. Some of the antibodies also posses antiprotzoal activity.
However, I should be remembered that antibodies can’t eradicate disease that takes place due to
viruses like influenza or cold and cough. In today’s era, the term “antibiotics” is used to define
any substances that are used against microbes. However, scientifically antibiotics are referred to
those antibacterial medicines that are produced naturally. One of the major examples of this is
Penicillin1. Antibacterial that are synthetic are called non-antibiotic. However, the objective of
both the classes is same that is to kill or prevent the growth of microorganism that are harmful to
the body. The invention of antibiotics has imposed highly positive impact n the medical industry.
This invention has not only been able to completely cure several bacterial diseases that were
considered to be incurable before the invention but has only enhances the average life
expectancy of the population across the world. In this essay, the tragic scenario that would have
taken place across the world in case antibiotics have not been invented has been discussed.
As being discussed earlier, prior to the invention of antibiotics, several illnesses and
infections that are highly common now would have been fatal. Death due to bacterial infection
would have increased to a commendable rate and human beings would have been dying of
diseases that are completely curable now. According to researchers, a world without antibiotics
1 Pruden, Amy, DG Joakim Larsson, Alejandro Amézquita, Peter Collignon, Kristian K. Brandt, David W. Graham,
James M. Lazorchak et al. "Management options for reducing the release of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance
genes to the environment." Environmental health perspectives 121, no. 8 (2013): 878.

2ESSAY
would have been highly tragic since a single cut or a scrape would have been highly life
threatening. This could be encountered right from the beginning of a new life. Childbirth would
have been highly risky for both mother as well as the child. This is because, during childbirth,
the mother posses several risk of getting affected by bacteria. According to researchers, before
penicillin was discovered 500 out of every 100,000 women died as a result of childbirth2.
In a world without out antibiotics, there prevails a risk of huge drop in birth rate. Due to
the high risk associated with child delivery, several women would have chosen not be have
children which would have impose negative impact on the population growth. Any bacterial
infection, if not prevented at the basis stage, posses the potential to turn into a fatal disease which
in turn can affect the life of both mother and child. The demand for Sexual transmitted disease
protection will get increased to a huge level. apart from controlling pregnant, the STD
protections will be able to protect individuals from transmitted disease that are curable by
antibiotics. Some of the STD s that are currently treated by Anti-biotic includes gonorrhea,
Chlamydia and syphilis. In a world without antibiotics, the mentioned diseases posses the risk of
staying with the infected individuals and thus posses the potential to shorten the life of the same.
Diseases like syphilis which can currently be treated with the help of antibiotics, posse long term
effects if they are left untreated. The individual suffering from the disease develops high
potential to suffer from paralysis, dementia and even can die.
Tuberculosis is another major example that can define the situation that would have taken
place without antibiotics. Being a bacterial disease, in a world without antibiotics, the only
treatment for the disease would be fresh air along with bed rest in sanatorium. Id the healthcare
2 Bassetti, Matteo, Maria Merelli, Chiara Temperoni, and Augusta Astilean. "New antibiotics for bad bugs: where
are we?." Annals of clinical microbiology and antimicrobials 12, no. 1 (2013): 22.

3ESSAY
service user turned out to be lucky his life was saved. Otherwise death would have been the only
scenario. According to a survey, more than 68.3 percent of the patients suffering from
tuberculosis had experienced death due to lack of anti bacterial treatment in the pre-antibiotic
days. Then the antibiotic streptomycin came along and completely changed how TB is treated3.
According to researchers, the most crucial problem that would have been faced by human
being is fighting fatal diseases like pneumonia. Before the discovery of penicillin, more than 20
percent of pneumonia cases were fatal whereas in this era of antibiotics, its only 5 percent in case
of mild pneumonia. Other bacteria caused diseases like meningitis, Lyme disease, staph
infections and strep throat that are easily treatable in this era of antibiotics would have been
deadly without treatment and can have long lasting as well as permanent effect.
Researchers stated that the concept of body tattoo would of never arrived if antibiotics
were not discovered. This is because, drawing tattoo on the skin posses the risk of antibacterial
infection. When infections do develop after an individual gets a tattoo, antibiotic are the only
remedy for this. Hence, in an world without antibiotics, tattoo painting on ones body would come
with greater risk of getting an incurable infection and thus people would have got dissuaded
from getting tattoos since tattoo infections are awful. Thus a rising art would have got abolished
due to absence of medicines that has the potential to fight bacterial infection. Decreasing rate of
cosmetic surgery would have been another major concern in an world without antibiotics.
Without antibiotics, cosmetic surgery like breast enhancement surgery will be a highly risky
procedure to undergo since infections due to bacteria ar highly common. For instance , more than
7 percent women gets bacterial infection after undergoing cosmetic surgeries.
3 Dickey, Seth W., Gordon YC Cheung, and Michael Otto. "Different drugs for bad bugs: antivirulence strategies in
the age of antibiotic resistance." Nature Reviews Drug Discovery16, no. 7 (2017): 457.

4ESSAY
As per researchers, treating cancer would have been highly difficult in the world that
lacks antibacterial treatment. Cancer, in today’s world is treated with the help of three common
treatment namely surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. All the three treatment posses the
potential to cause major infection. For instance, any incision on skin can lead to infection while
chemotherapy as well as radiotherapy diminishes the amount of white blood cell leading to an
enhanced possibility of infection. In order to prevent such infections antibiotics are given to the
patients during as well as after the treatment of cancer. Similar obstacle would have been faced
during organ transplantation. In a world without antibiotics, several surgeries specially the open
cavity surgeries will be highly risky4. As a result of this, surgeons would not be able to perform
critical surgeries like heat surgeries. Transplantations of any kind would be impossible since an
individual receiving a transplant would have it fail without antibiotics. According to researchers,
in the pre-antibiotic world transplant of body parts was no possible since the immune system
would have attacked the transplant. This may cause death of the individual who have gone
through the transplant. The inability to carry out safe surgeries as well as transplants will drive a
current effect from side to side the medical world and several diseases that are treated as well as
cured by surgery or transplants will be much more dangerous.
In a world without antibiotics accidents would be similar to death sentence. Even minor
accidents like bite of a house cat can cause horrible bacterial infection. While the infection would
take place since animal’s moths are full of bacteria, infection also happen to cuts as well as
abrasions that are not caused by the bites of animals. Larger the cut high will be chance of
infection. Thus it can be clearly understood that in a world without antibiotics, serious accidents
like car crashes, injuries due to work place accidents and rime are highly life threatening and
4 Waddington, Conrad Hal. The nature of life. Routledge, 2017.

5ESSAY
would be nearly fatal. Even if an individual have survived from a vital accident, he orr she will
eventually get killed by infection. This will impose high impact on the life of the individuals.
Roads law would get changed and safety precautions will be stricter. High restrictions from both
government as well as parents will be imposed in order to avoid childhood accident that includes
playground equipment accidents or a fall from tree.
From the above discussion it can be easily understood that absence of antibiotics would
have massive impact on human beings. Not only on the people who are getting directly affected
due to lack of antibiotics, it would severely affect the whole population. This is because, the
economy would have collapsed and thus millions of individual would become poor. The GDP of
the nation would have got dropped by a huge percentage. The mortality rate of individuals would
have gone down to a commendable level. One may question that what realtion of absence of
antibiotics and economical crisis is. The chief reason behind this is mass sickness would
definitely reduce the production rate as well as performance of the organizations. People
suffering from bacteria diseases would be compelled to take risk either at hospital or at home.
Not only that millions of sick people would enhance he load and stress on the healthcare system
which would already become fairly expensive5.
While the above discussed portion states the tragic scenarios that would have been faced
by individual if antibiotics were not discovered. It can be clearly understood that the discovery of
antibiotic has saved millions and millions of life since after its discovery. Even before a few
years antibiotics are considered to be a “cure-all”. From any minor to major bacterial diseases,
5 Boucher, Helen W., George H. Talbot, Daniel K. Benjamin Jr, John Bradley, Robert J. Guidos, Ronald N. Jones,
Barbara E. Murray, Robert A. Bonomo, David Gilbert, and Infectious Diseases Society of America. "10×'20
progress—development of new drugs active against gram-negative bacilli: an update from the Infectious Diseases
Society of America." Clinical infectious diseases 56, no. 12 (2013): 1685-1694.

6ESSAY
healthcare professionals used to prescribe antibiotics. Being prescribed to consumers number of
times, patients were often found to stop completing the prescribed course of antibiotics once they
felt that the disease is under their control. Not only that, since the price of antibiotics has made
the medicines highly affordable, health care service users across the world are found to be
consuming antibiotics for negligible reasons. As a result of all of this, several bacteria have
developed resistance against antibiotic. Bacterias that carries the genes that allow them to survive
the exposure to the antibiotics are known as superbugs. It can be clearly understood that the
development of superbugs bears massive threat for the population across the world since it has
the potential to make the action of antibiotics ineffective. One of the major superbugs had been
detected in India in the year 2011 is NDM-1. The development of the bug had highly alarmed the
medical community of the world. NDM1 is the superbug which passes easily between types of
bacteria called enterobacteriaceae such as E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae and makes them
resistant to almost all of the powerful, last-line group of antibiotics called carbapenems6. After
the mentioned phenomenon, more than 12 cases where the healthcare service user have died
even after provision of antibiotic due to NDM-1 has been detected at Canada. Experts fears that
within a few decades the mentioned superbug will spread globally and antibiotics will not be
able to eradicate the disease. According to researchers, the era of antibiotics is collapsing
gradually7. After a couple of generations, the effectiveness of the antibiotics will get highly
reduces and as a result the world will be again a place without antibiotic. Hence it can be
understood that drug companies needs to invent new series of antibiotics that has the potential to
kill the bacteria that are currently resistant to the existing antibiotics. However, several resistance
6 Penesyan, Anahit, Michael Gillings, and Ian T. Paulsen. "Antibiotic discovery: combatting bacterial resistance in
cells and in biofilm communities." Molecules 20, no. 4 (2015): 5286-5298.
7 Dantas, Gautam, and Morten OA Sommer. "How to fight back against antibiotic resistance." Am Sci 102, no. 1
(2014): 42-51.

7ESSAY
has been encountered in the developing process. In spite of the fact that the process of
development of antibiotic that posses the potential to kill superbugs had started as early as 2010,
the pharma companies have not shown enough enthusiasm for difficult antibiotic research. While
lack of fund s a major problem, another reason behind this us that antibiotics, unlike medicines
used for diseases lie heart disease, are not used on a regular basis. Individual takes the drugs for a
week instead of life, and since resistance means the drugs become ineffective after a while, there
is just not much cash in it.
According to majority of surgeons, a good number of treatment will become impossible if
the aptitude to treat infections are lost. For instance, in case of transplant surgeries the immune
system of the part needs to be suppressed to stop them rejecting the new organ is done through
antibiotics8. If bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, the patient will become prey to
infections and even death my occur due to this. The issue is not only with advanced medicine but
also with abdominal surgery. In this type of surgery, it is highly crucial to safeguard the patient
from leaking of bacteria into the body cavity. In case, antibiotics lost their efficiency, the death
rate due to bacteria infection after appendix operation will increase by a commendable amount.
Studies have shown that the death rate of dying due to pneumonia or septicemia are twice as high
if the bacteria are drug resistant , which have raised the case of pneumonia from 20-30 percent to
40-60 percent9.
From the above discussion it can be clearly understood that actions needs to be taken on
an emergence basis in order to eradicate superbugs. For this, it highly crucial to analyze the
8 Gould, I. M., & Bal, A. M. (2013). New antibiotic agents in the pipeline and how they can help overcome
microbial resistance. Virulence, 4(2), 185-191.
9 Murray, Patrick R., Ken S. Rosenthal, and Michael A. Pfaller. Medical microbiology. Elsevier Health Sciences,
2015.

8ESSAY
reasons behind its development. One of the chief reasons that have been detected includes the
overconsumption of antibiotics even when it is not needs. The antibiotic that are used to fight
bacteria and are lifesaving drugs for cancer an heart diseases are often taken for granted by
public. Frequent an unnecessary consumption is one of the major reasons for the development of
antibiotic resistance bacteria. Hence it is highly crucial to use antibiotics only at times when it is
needs in order to avoid creating strain in microbes that are resistant to the system. The second
reason behind this is the reluctance of heath care service users to complete the full course of
antibiotic. Being highly affordable, people often through away antibiotics once the systems of
the diseases are gone. This in turn leaves the chance of regrowth of the bacteria that has been
once prevented and thus recurrence of the disease10. Not only that, frequent incompletion of the
course give birth to bacteria that are antibiotic resistant. Thus it is highly crucial for patients to
understood that full course of the antibiotics has the potential to kill the bacteria. If half of the
course is taken, the disease will not get cured but will come back in a more severe form.
From the above discussion it can be concluded that that life without antibiotics would
have been tragic. Antibiotics have saved the life of human since after the invention of penicillin.
However, due to reluctance of human beings and wrong methods of intaking the highly powerful
medicines bacteria that are resistant to antibiotic have developed. Considering the fact that it has
the potential to bring back the era that lacks antibiotic medicines, it is high time to raise the
awareness of the people of using the medicines wisely and appropriately.
10 Zhu, Yong-Guan, Timothy A. Johnson, Jian-Qiang Su, Min Qiao, Guang-Xia Guo, Robert D. Stedtfeld, Syed A.
Hashsham, and James M. Tiedje. "Diverse and abundant antibiotic resistance genes in Chinese swine
farms." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2013): 201222743.

9ESSAY
Reference list
Pruden, Amy, DG Joakim Larsson, Alejandro Amézquita, Peter Collignon, Kristian K. Brandt,
David W. Graham, James M. Lazorchak et al. "Management options for reducing the release of
antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes to the environment." Environmental health
perspectives 121, no. 8 (2013): 878.
Bassetti, Matteo, Maria Merelli, Chiara Temperoni, and Augusta Astilean. "New antibiotics for
bad bugs: where are we?." Annals of clinical microbiology and antimicrobials 12, no. 1 (2013):
22.
Dickey, Seth W., Gordon YC Cheung, and Michael Otto. "Different drugs for bad bugs:
antivirulence strategies in the age of antibiotic resistance." Nature Reviews Drug Discovery16,
no. 7 (2017): 457.
Waddington, Conrad Hal. The nature of life. Routledge, 2017.
Boucher, Helen W., George H. Talbot, Daniel K. Benjamin Jr, John Bradley, Robert J. Guidos,
Ronald N. Jones, Barbara E. Murray, Robert A. Bonomo, David Gilbert, and Infectious Diseases
Society of America. "10×'20 progress—development of new drugs active against gram-negative
bacilli: an update from the Infectious Diseases Society of America." Clinical infectious
diseases 56, no. 12 (2013): 1685-1694.
Penesyan, Anahit, Michael Gillings, and Ian T. Paulsen. "Antibiotic discovery: combatting
bacterial resistance in cells and in biofilm communities." Molecules 20, no. 4 (2015): 5286-5298.
Gould, I. M., & Bal, A. M. (2013). New antibiotic agents in the pipeline and how they can help
overcome microbial resistance. Virulence, 4(2), 185-191.

10ESSAY
Zhu, Yong-Guan, Timothy A. Johnson, Jian-Qiang Su, Min Qiao, Guang-Xia Guo, Robert D.
Stedtfeld, Syed A. Hashsham, and James M. Tiedje. "Diverse and abundant antibiotic resistance
genes in Chinese swine farms." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2013):
201222743.
Murray, Patrick R., Ken S. Rosenthal, and Michael A. Pfaller. Medical microbiology. Elsevier
Health Sciences, 2015.
Dantas, Gautam, and Morten OA Sommer. "How to fight back against antibiotic resistance." Am
Sci 102, no. 1 (2014): 42-51.