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'Should the widespread use of antibiotics continue?' The first antibiotic, penicillin, went into mass production in 1945 (5) and before this time, antibiotics were not used in medical practice and the majority of bacteria were characteristically sensitive to antibiotics. As these drugs became widely used and they still are, the bacterial resistance to one or more antibiotics has increased so much that antibiotics which were previously widely effective are no longer useful against certain bacterial types. In most cases, antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria is not due to mutation where the protein that the antibiotic attacks is altered. Instead, antiobiotic resistance in nature normally involves the bacteria producing enzymes which target the antibiotic making it inactive. An important reason why the widespread use of antibiotics should not continue is that if a bacterium becomes resistant to all antibiotics availible and passes on these characteristics, then there could be a worldwide epidemic of...

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