A story reported in December of 2000 by NBC News carried the headline, “It’s a danger of staggering proportions. Every year, one in 20 hospitalized Americans 1.8 million people develop an infection, with 88,000 of them dying. The biggest threat: “supergerms” resistant to antibiotics.” The NBC report was prompted by a new study from the centres for Disease Control and Prevention that reported that samples of the deadly Streptococcus bacteria that resist not only penicillin but also two other powerful antibiotics jumped 64 per cent in only three years. The reason most commonly discussed for these increases in antibiotic resistance is the adaptation of bacteria to the over usage of the antibiotics themselves.
