Antibiotic Resistance - Essay Example

For some reason, when I think about evolution I think about monkeys; never did I think about a mutating mold or ever-changing bacteria. Evolution is why this world and every organism survives the way it does. Darwin called evolution “descent with modification”. Both prokaryotic cells that create bacteria and eukaryotic cells that make up most other forms of life evolve. Natural selection and genetic variation are simply the way evolution happens. This is why there is an antibiotic resistance. If bacteria are constantly changing then antibiotics must change too. Evolution is an amazing process that explains and justifies change. In New Mexico at the Carlsbad Caverns National Park there is a unique and enlightened discovery. There are many caves in the national park that have never been intruded upon by humans. The Lechuguilla Cave had subterranean tunnels that covered over 200 km in the park. Here scientist found bacteria that had been untouched for 4 million years. This untouched bacteria had the potential to help scientist understand why antibiotics are failing.
There was a study done on the 93 strands of bacteria collected here. Surprisingly enough, even though they had never been touched they had still evolved past our antibiotics. They found that” all were resistant to at least one of the antibiotics that modern medicine uses to fight bacterial infections and some were resistant to 14. In addition, virtually all of the 26 antibiotics tested as part of the study proved useless in killing at least one of the strains of bacteria collected”(Heally, 2012). This was an epiphany for these researchers! Many people think that antibiotics aren’t working because they have been overused which has given our bodies time to become immune. Scientist believed that bacteria’s ability to change and become immune to medicine was our fault. Their new findings were on ancient bacteria that had never been exposed to medicine, although they may have been exposed