Victoria Albers' reading response to The Antibiotic Paradox, chapters 3&4

I thought that chapter three was filled with a ton of great information. It sets the picture for how our use for medications and remedies began, starting thousands of years ago. We are so reliant on pills and other medications to cure our diseases, which most definitely plays a negative role in antibiotic misuse. I found it very interesting (P.58) that healing in ancient times was first based off of spiritual guidance, and then slowly transformed into more organic methods. Before this complete transformation occurred, spiritual and physical means were believed to cure diseases along side of each other for quite some time. I also found it fascinating that in the 13th century in Spain and Italy, there was a clear distinction between what we now call pharmacies and physicians. We have hung onto that idea for hundreds of years and still practice it.

Chapter four was based on scientific aspects of antibiotic resistance and how it works, and it was a lot harder to read and stay focused. I think the first thing that needs to be done before anyone can do anything about antibiotic resistance is to be educated on how the bacteria perform this amazing task ,which is exactly where this chapter came in quite helpful. Levy did a good job explaining the genetics that bacteria use for reproduction and how it relates to resistance. He had a real good description on the use of plasmids, transposons, naked DNA, and phages on page (84). He then goes on to describe some antibiotics that have been used or is currently used and what method they use to carry on their genetic information. This carrying on of genetic information is essential to understand how resistance occurs and could possibly help us find different ways to fight it.

I thought the author was redundant in a lot of what he said. He said the same thing in different variations quite often, and I feel like he could have saved a lot of work by condensing his work. He may have done this on purpose to get his point across, which I guess did help because I read it more than once, but mostly I just started to become irritated. In chapter 4 he used a lot of comical and funny pictures for examples. I think he did this because the information given was really dry and it gave the reader a break from such a huge load of material. It was nice and kept me from getting to bored.