Bacterial resistance is a problem that has profoundly impacted the medical community. Bacterial resistance results when bacteria become resistant to individual antibiotics through the development of specific defense mechanisms which render the antibiotic ineffective. This problem has become evident in recent years as numerous cases have been reported in which antibiotics are not effective against the bacteria that they have fought off for years. The recent troubles with bacterial resistance have caused panic throughout the United States. The pharmaceutical industry hasn't been producing many antibiotics because they thought that the antibiotics they had created had solved many of the problems resulting from bacterial infections. An increasing amount of attention has been given to antibiotic resistance with each passing year and experts are optimistic for the future; however, the threat of bacterial resistance exists today and is a major cause for concern. .
The discovery of penicillin the 1940s proved to be the dawn of the antibiotic era. In less than two decades, major advancements had been made in the development of antibiotics. There were so many different antibiotics developed that doctors and scientists focused their attention on other problems plaguing the nation. Doctors prescribed antibiotics frequently, often when they were not even needed. According to a 1998 report by the Institute of Medicine, up to fifty percent of antibiotics are prescribed unnecessarily. This blatant overuse of antibiotics had a profound effect on the efficiency of the drugs in the future. The wonder drugs that had been so effective in treating an array of diseases had started to lose the battle against increasingly resistant bacteria, often referred to as superbugs. .
The problem of bacterial resistance is rooted in the overuse of many antibiotics. Doctors used antibiotics to treat countless diseases and some bacteria became resistant to the drugs after time.