Term Papers on Antibiotics

Term Paper Title	Antibiotics
# of Words	971
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.88

Antibiotics

     An antibiotic, is defined to be a drug produced by certain microbes.
Most doctors use antibiotics to help fight the germs in a patient.  Antibiotics
are obtained from plants, fungi, air, water, soil, just about anything on earth.
Antibiotics kill and attack the germ or virus in the body, but do not hurt the
human cells, ordinarily. The antibiotics are used to treat many various types of
diseases, such as tuberculosis, syphilis, and several kinds of infections.
     People have been using antibiotics for more than 2,500 years. They used
molds to help cure some skin infections and rashes. It was in the late 1800's
that the real study of medicine began. Louis Pasteur discovered that bacterium
was the cause of disease, and proved wrong the theory of spontaneous generation.
After him there was Robert Koch, who developed a method of isolating and growing
bacteria. Scientists tried developing drugs that could kill microbes, but they
proved to be either dangerous or ineffective.
     In 1928 there was a discovery by Alexander Fleming. He detected that a
substance he called "penicillin" destroyed bacteria. Then in the late 1930's,
two British scientists invented a method of extracting penicillin from the mold.
This was the start of developing new drugs to treat diseases and bacteria.
     Over the years, numerous thousands of antibiotic material have been
found in nature as well as produced chemically but, there are few that are safe
and useful. However the ones that are safe and effective have saved many lives
and have helped extend life expectancy.
     Right now, there is more than 70 different kinds of antibiotics in use.
Most antibiotics are used to treat infections, some for fungi and protozoa, but
antibiotics are not usually effective against viruses. So they have developed
other methods such as vaccines against viruses.
     Antibiotics work by one of three ways, they can one, prevent the cell
wall from growing; two, obstruct the cell membrane; or three disrupt the
chemical processes. When the antibiotic prevents the cell wall from forming, the
antitoxin surrounds the bacteria's membrane, and then it forms a rigid wall that
stops the cell wall from splitting open, which would produce another cell. The
humans' cells are not hurt by this because human cells do not have cell walls.
     If the antibiotic obstructs the cell membrane, which controls the flow
of items in and out of the cell, then essential nourishment can escape the cell.
Then a toxic substance could enter the cell killing it. Human cells are not
effected by this method because the antitoxin only effects the microbial cells.
     If the antitoxin disrupted the chemical process, then the microbe cannot
survive. The cells need the proteins and nucleic acids, that they produce to
survive, and by interfering with this process, the cell cannot persevere. Human
cells are immune to this method because, both kinds of cells produce proteins
and acids to survive, but the methods of making the proteins in each cell differ
enough for the antibiotic to be able to decipher the different methods.
     Antibiotics are ...

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