Need to boost our antimicrobial arsenal

This is in reference to the cover story,“The magic bullet’s toll” (16-31 January 2020).The chance discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928 and its subsequent development by Howard Walter Florey introduced a new era of medicine. Both Fleming and Florey were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1945. In his acceptance speech, Fleming raised alarm on the overuse of antibiotics: “Time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant men may easily under-dose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug, make them resistant. ”The antibiotic apocalypse described in the article corroborates Fleming’s apprehensions. Indeed, now we are moving backwards to the world of our grandparents where bacterial infections were often lethal because no specific treatments were available.

The natural process of evolution of resistant strains has been accelerated by the selective pressure exerted by the widespread, indiscriminate and irrational use of antimicrobial drugs. Because of the legendary resilience of microbes, the least that humans can do is to keep them at bay. In the continuing epic struggle with microbes we are in critical need for novel strategies to boost the antimicrobial arsenal. In any event, we should not forget what the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould said: “We live in the age of bacteria… as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, until the world ends.”

JAYDEV JANA KOLKATA