I don't think there is much debate - we are actually losing the "arms race" with bacteria. That said, in many cases, anti-biotics are the most effective tool we have to fight them. Unfortunately, there is no choice but to use them.

There are a lot of researchers investigating better ways to fight bacteria. Recently there was an article in some high impact journal (name escapes me) that described anti-microbial proteins discovered through a relatively new screening technique. Many bacteria actually produce anti-microbial proteins themselves to fight each other off. However, one of the many problems with finding these proteins is that they are hard to grow! The new screening technique takes advantage of their more natural growing conditions to capture these hard to find bacteria/proteins. Another famous ancedotal to describe how hard it is to grow bacteria: the microbe responsible for something like 90% of stomach ulcers was discredited for years because of the inability to culture it in a petri dish. There was evidence showing the bacterial culture in people's stomachs but it was impossible to grow outside. Thus, the investigator drank an infected person's stomach 'juices' to show he would get stomach ulcers that resembled the cultures. Many years later, the bacteria was grown in a petri dish and it was named H. Pylori.




Finally, Tellarion continues to prove he is an idiot. Pro-scribe is not the same as pre-scribe. Idiot.