• Question: What would the world be like if we hadn't discovered penecilin?

    Asked by martha to Jen, Jill, Mel, Phil, Stef on 18 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Phil Rice

      Phil Rice answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      @martha. thanks. Good question again. We would have fewer people as the whole of the antibiotic story started from that discovery. People do recover from infections, but they are very powerful agents of natural selection – witness the sickle cell disease story in Africa and Malaria. We would also not have nearly so many drug resistant bacteria since they would not have been exposed to them.

Comments