Samantha's reading response to chapters 3 and 4 in The Antibiotic Paradox

Once again I have to say that I’m still enjoying reading this book which I find is rare when it comes to books needed to be read for the various classes I’ve taken. Chapter three though a bit short, definitely piqued my interest because I do enjoy reading about older history that has influenced our advancement as a civilization. Reading about the old ‘cures’ that people like the ancient Egyptians used to use is rather interesting to me. Like how the Egyptians would use a mixture of figs, grapes, sycamore fruit, gum and yellow ochre along with a chant to help cure diarrhea. Or how the ancient Greeks defined illnesses as the imbalance of four body humors which were blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile and that these embodied a mixture of four universal qualities which were moist, dry, cold, and warm. Now days these things may seem silly to us and potentially dangerous depending on the methods used to treat illnesses. For instance one of the dangerous methods that used to be used for curing illnesses was bloodletting, which I find to be rather disgusting but it was very dangerous because not only could individuals loose too much blood this way but by letting blood your lowering an individual’s ability to fight of disease and sickness because their body is trying to repopulate the lost blood cells. Of course today we can get our medicine from pharmacies and physicians will tell us what we need to take in order to get better. Although I do believe there are still some ‘traditional’ methods of curing illnesses and sickness that are used. For instance when I don’t feel well, as in I’m going to get a cold I’ll take a few aspirin before I go to bed and drink a cup of my grandma’s secret tea recipe with a little honey in it and I almost always feel way better in the morning. I found the discussion about almanacs interesting because it brought up the topic of harmless ‘home remedies’ like my grandma’s tea but also the possibilities for quackery, or people playing on other people’s want of finding an easy fix. Creating easy cure’s for sicknesses can be very dangerous for individuals who are not experienced with medicine and who need serious medical attention.

Chapter four in TAP wasn’t as interesting to me mainly because my area of study is psychology and reading about the development of antibiotic resistance doesn’t pertain to my area of study and nor do I find a personal interest in it. But despite not enjoying this topic to it’s fullest extent I did learn a bit more about antibiotic resistance. I learned about plasmids and how they enable bacteria to have certain traits like allowing bacteria to adhere to the cells lining the human gastrointestinal tract which in turns allows the bacteria to withstand the continues flow of food residue passing through it. Another trait that plasmids can give bacteria is the resistance to antibiotics. These bacteria that first emerged as being resistant to penicillin were found in hospitals that were using the most penicillin and they were different than mutated bacteria that had been created in the lab. I also learned that there were diverse mechanisms for the resistance of antibiotics among bacteria. There is decreased drug entry in which the bacteria alter the amount of antibiotics that enter or penetrate a cell, and in order for an antibiotic to work it must penetrate a cell so if the amount entering a cell is decreased the antibiotics effectiveness will diminish. Another method is inactivation of the antibiotic which does just as the method days, the bacteria inactivates the antibiotic. I also learned about how some bacteria alter what the antibiotics target within the bacteria so the antibiotic doesn’t find what it’s looking for and therefore doesn’t attack the bacteria. Another subject breached in this chapter is multiple-drug resistance which can create a problem in the medical field because when a bacteria is resistant to one type of treatment methods we usually have some back up treatment methods, but when a bacteria is resistant to multiple drugs this can limit the way we treat the patient and it can limit the chances of a patient recovering in the first place. Overall this chapter was very informative and I learned quite a bit about bacteria and how and why they developed resistance to antibiotics.