The Insidious Threat of Drug-Resistant Disease

When Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, he ushered in a new era of medicine: the age of antibiotics. Infections that had once been fatal could now be treated with relatively simple cures. In the decades that followed, penicillin became just one of many antimicrobial drugs that enabled humans and animals to live longer, more productive lives. The proliferation of those drugs seemed to have few, if any, downsides....