Combating Antibiotic Resistance
For the week three individual assignment I decided to create a graphic from chapter four from the book Watersheds 4. This chapter is titled “The Ingenuity of the Bugs, Combating Resistance to Antibiotics. The chapter discusses how antibiotic resistance affects ecosystems of both animals and humans, and potential fixes to this problem.
In the graphic, the first line depicts how people can become sick from food borne illnesses. This can be helped by giving animals antibiotics to fight off many bacterial diseases which will equal fewer sick people. The second line depicts that bacteria will adapt to live despite the use of antibiotics if the same antibiotic is used too often in animals. This will once again equal sick people as the bacteria adapts. Third line depicts how sick people can be treated with antibiotics. The overuse of these antibiotics can equal antibiotic resistance. The fourth line depicts the same, only with animals. Animals can also be treated with overused antibiotics which will equal to an antibiotic resistance for the animals which humans depend on for food.
The main point of the study is that bacteria will adapt to survive, and will adapt to antibiotics. If one antibiotic is used too often for the same bacteria, that antibiotic will become ineffective as the bacteria adapts. This will equal sick animals, which will transfer to humans as we eat the animals. The antibiotics can also fight off just one type of bacteria. This will cause other types of bacteria to grow uncontrollably which could lead to new illnesses.
Our ecosystem is very delicate. It has its own way of checks and balances. The study gives an example of introducing lions into an ecosystem to control the population of dark colored boars. The lions only eat dark colored boars. As the dark colored boars are removed from the ecosystem, the light colored pigs create other problems. And the dominant predators of the area will be challenged by the...