Word: penicillins
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Abraham has been a leader in the field of antibiotics since World War II, when he was part of the Oxford research team that first isolated penicillin. Later, Abraham and his assistant discovered a second group of antibiotics that became as important as penicillin in controlling bacterial infection...
Last spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised obstetricians to give penicillin to all women at risk for strep when they give birth...
Fleming's further experimentation with penicillin--a few poorly planned attempts to treat patients--proved frustrating, and he turned his attention to other research. But in 1938 Oxford pathologist Howard Florey and his young assistant Ernst Chain took up the work again, using the progeny of Fleming's own molds. In a relatively short time, they demonstrated penicillin's efficacy in treating human infection, a feat that had eluded their predecessor. In 1945, Fleming, Florey and Chain were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine...
Thus was launched a new era that was to be marked by advances so extraordinary that the word miracle would be used to describe them. The birth of antibiotics dramatically altered not only the face of bedside practice but the entire course of medical research. Because penicillin--and later antibacterial agents--had to be made in large quantities and with scrupulous standards, unprecedented cooperation was required between scientists and the still immature pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, the development of the drugs vastly enlarged the vistas of medical scientists, calling for heavy financial commitments and eventual massive infusions of government funding...
Here again, much of the blame can be laid to human activity. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria, for example, are largely a human creation. Miracle drugs such as penicillin and tetracycline have been so overprescribed and then misused by patients that they have encouraged the bugs to develop immunities. The result is infections that are nearly impossible to treat. One deadly microbe, a type of staph that often causes postsurgical infections in hospitals, can now be attacked with only one antibiotic, vancomycin...