Sluts beware!
Sadly, it’s not just sluts that are affected. The genes that make bacteria resistant to antibiotics are routinely shuffled from one species to another, which means even bacteria that are passed indirectly start being immune. The article cites MRSA, the variant of staph infection that is resistant to almost all known antibiotics and is spread increasingly in settings as varied as gyms and public transport.
It’s going to be a scary time out there for a while, until new classes of antibiotics are released.
Don’t worry about the graph ending in 2012. I’m sure the trend didn’t continue!
Are there any known paths to a different antibiotic
There are several paths, both natural (looking at substances, animals, plants, and fungi with antibiotic properties) and biochemical (chemical engineering), and some might actually yield relatively quickly. But of course nobody can tell how quickly that will pan out, and how quickly we will have to face a bacterium with full resistance that is transmitted easily.
MRSA scares the shit out of me
At least it’s not Double Enthusiastic Gonorrhea. You don’t want that