Alexander Fleming's Antibiotic Resistance Warning

In 1945, fresh from winning the Nobel Prize for discovering penicillin, Alexander Fleming told The New York Times that careless use of the drug could breed bacteria that no longer responded to it. He explained that underdosing or overusing penicillin would kill off vulnerable germs and leave the hardier ones to survive and multiply. Within about 10 years, scientists started to report penicillin-resistant infections, just as Fleming had warned.

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