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When antibiotics first came out, nobody could have imagined we'd have the resistance problem we face today. We didn't give bacteria credit for being able to change and adapt so fast.

Antibiotics are a very serious public health problem for us, and it's getting worse. Resistant microbes outstrip new antibiotics. It's an ongoing problem. It's not like we can fix it, and it's over. We have to fight continued resistance with a continual pipeline of new antibiotics and continue with the perpetual challenge.

Antimicrobial resistance is on the rise in Europe and elsewhere in the world. We are losing our first-line antimicrobials. Replacement treatments are more costly, more toxic, need much longer durations of treatment, and may require treatment in intensive care units.

The more we look at drug resistance, the more concerned we are. It basically shows us that the end of the road isn't very far away for antibiotics.

Widespread use of antibiotics promotes the spread of antibiotic resistance. Smart use of antibiotics is the key to controlling its spread.

Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. This will be a post-antibiotic era. In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry. A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill.

I think that the discoveries of antibiotics and vaccines have contributed to the improvement of the quality of life, making it possible to prevent contagious diseases.

There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.

In the development of antibiotics, the soil microbiological population has contributed more than its share. It is to the soil that the microbiologists came in search of new antibacterial agents.

Bacteria evolve, and so they become resistant to existing drugs. Sometimes they revert, depending on how damaging the mutation is to the life cycle of the bacteria. Mutations that give rise to resistance against particular compounds do increase, and that is why you constantly have to have new ones.