The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is one of the truly terrifying scenarios for the future. Prior to the advent of modern medicine, plagues often wiped out large swathes of humanity. Less than 100 years ago, the Spanish Influenza killed between 50-100 million people.
Scientists think something like that could happen again soon. Already, gonorrhea evolved to be borderline untreatable.
Imagine that happening with something many times more deadly.
To show how this happens, scientists at Harvard filmed a time-lapse of E. coli travelling through zones of antibiotics. First none, then something that was strong enough to kill it. You know, stop it in its tracks. It does, but only for a short length of time before it mutates to survive. In just two weeks, the bacteria evolves to handle antibiotics 1,000 times stronger than it originally could.
We’re all gonna die.
[Via Kottke]