Attack of the killer mutants: modern bacteria are resisting treatment by antibiotics

When penicillin was first discovered to cure diseases in the 1930s, it seemed a miracle. Some thought you couldn't get too much of a good thing. One Asian brothel routinely fed penicillin prophylactically to its workers, hoping to prevent infections. But some Neisseriea gonorrheoeae, the bacterium that causes gonorrhea, mutated in ways that allowed them to survive the antibiotic onslaught. By the 1970s, several gonorrhea strains were almost completely resistant to all forms of penicillin; one was traced back to that specific brothel after spreading around the world.

Gonorrhea bacteria aren't alone in having developed resistance to what were once miracle drugs. Other bacteria that have "learned" to combat antibiotics include those that cause ear infections and meningitis in children, pneumonia and tuberculosis.

Resistance Builds