Victoria Albers' reading response to The Antibiotic Paradox, chapters 1&2

I thought TAP was quite interesting. I thought it was going to be a harder read, but Levy breaks things down and explains things in great detail without making it too complex. I don’t think I would have been able to get into the book if Levy jumped into the technical descriptive aspects of antibiotics because it would have just reminded me of a textbook. Instead, he started off chapter one with a great introduction on the discovery of penicillin through the Coconaut Grove disaster. It brought emotion especially after the author discussed that penicillin was starting to become less effective which made me want to continue to learn more about antibiotics and really got me interested to keep reading.

Chapter 2 included a lot of the content I learned in microbiology previously. It refreshed my memory on the difference between gram positive and gram negative which is an important concept to understand because it can help in the identification process of bacteria. It also mentioned quite a few important big names in microbiology history including Robert Koch, who I find important in the antibiotic movement. He introduced a solid medium into the scientific world of growing bacteria which gave scientists an upper hand because it provided them with a way to quickly grow specimins.

The visuals came in handy to have some sort of a graphical reference to refer to while reading about the makeup of antibiotics and also the different types of bacteria and the explanation of the mechanisms they use to survive. Having a picture puts an image in my head and makes it much easier to recall the information I read about. The one that really caught my attention was the one on page 39 that showed a penicillin colony with lysed staphylococcal colonies around it. It helped me see how penicillin works in real life. One thing that could have been different is the quality of the pictures. They seemed cartoonish and cheesy, but they served their purpose and supplemented the reading.