The superbugs are going stronger.
There are mechanisms of evolution involved in drug resistance. According to our class lectures, there are 5 causes of evolution: mutation, migration, genetic drift, natural selection, and artificial selection. The main mechanism of evolution involved in drug resistance is natural selection. Natural selection is “the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring” (Dictionary.com). The problem that people worldwide is that these diseases are developing immunity to the medicine that people once took to get rid of them. This is an example of natural selection because the diseases, also referred to as “superbugs” in the article, are changing their genetics in order to be able to survive. This genetic adaption is very similar to humans. For example, personally, I had a bacterial infection a few years ago. However, my body changed itself, so that I could be immune or at least less susceptible to this infection. This is what the “superbugs” are doing. They are identifying what is harming them and building immunity to them. This should be very concerning to everyone. Illnesses that we could heal with a quick scrawl of a doctor’s prescription no longer can be stopped. This means that even the common cold could become strong enough to kill people, drugs or not. As stated in the article, “there are an increasing number of infections for which there are virtually no therapeutic options”. We should definitely start “new discovery, research and development” for new medicines and treatments. It is a matter of survival. We either have to adapt and build immunity to these diseases, killing many people in the process, or start developing new medicines. If not, we will be out-adapted by these superbugs.
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