Caroline Hulbert
4.30.19
Bio 10H
Current Event 10
Schwartz, Alex. “Antibiotics Save Lives-but Misusing Them Could Lead to Millions of Deaths.” Popular Science, 29 Apr. 2019, www.popsci.com/antimicrobial-drug-resistance-deaths-2050.
For this current event, I decided to review the article, “Antibiotics Save Lives-but Misusing Them Could Lead to Millions of Deaths,” by Alex Schwartz. The author begins the article by describing something that has become a huge problem in the world, which is the overuse and misuse of antibiotics and antimicrobial medicine. According to the infectious disease unit of the United Nations, this could lead to “devastating infectious disease outbreaks in the coming decades.” The described overuse of antibiotics has led to infectious diseases, like tuberculosis, MRSA, and malaria harder to treat because they are becoming resistant to the drugs commonly used to treat them. Not only does this put healthy people at risk, but people undergoing medical procedures are under threat as well. Some of the suggested solutions to the growing issues were taking more holistic approaches to disease care, having countries put more regulations in place regarding the drugs, as well as doing research to create better versions of them and ending agricultural reliance on them. The article then goes on to talk about the fact that because of genetic mutation, microbes become resistant to drugs over time, which is why its overuse is such a huge problem.
This article is extremely relevant to society, as it discusses an issue that endangers millions of people around the world. Antibiotics have always been thought to save lives and while they do, there are also many people suffering from the misuse of them. The article mentions, “around 700,000 people die from drug-resistant diseases each year—that number could skyrocket to 10 million if countries don’t take action.” Having more coverage about this issue in media will hopefully make people more aware of the harm that the overuse of antibiotics has caused and the immediate need for action.
I think that this article was very well-written. The author was able to describe a complex subject matter in a way that made it easy for readers to comprehend, while still being sophisticated and using advanced vocabulary. Including details and statistics about the issue at hand helped establish its severity and make a connection with readers. However, Schwartz jumps right into discussing the misuse and overuse of antimicrobial medicine at the beginning of the article. It would have helped make more of an impact on readers if he had included some background information about the topic first or describing the good aspects of antibiotics. It also would have helped if he had provided more details about where the antibiotic issue is most prevalent in the world. Despite these areas of improvement, I thought that Schwartz’s article was very detailed and touched on a serious issue in the world that many people are unaware of.
Megan Barker 5/8/19
ReplyDeleteBio 10H C Odd Current Event 11
Schwartz, Alex. “Antibiotics Save Lives-but Misusing Them Could Lead to Millions of Deaths.” Popular Science, 29 Apr. 2019, www.popsci.com/antimicrobial-drug-resistance-deaths-2050.
Caroline’s review of the article “Antibiotics Save Lives-but Misusing Them Could Lead to Millions of Deaths” by Alex Schwartz was very interesting and well done. Firstly, her review was very well-explained. She told and described each of her arguments, supplementing many of them with facts and figures. Additionally, she had a very powerful relevance paragraph. For example, she uses statistics to strengthen her paragraph and prove how the argument is relative. She includes from the article that “around 700,000 people die from drug-resistant diseases each year—that number could skyrocket to 10 million if countries don’t take action” (Schwartz). Lastly, Caroline’s paper was well-written, using advanced vocabulary and sentence structure to help make her review more entertaining. For instance, she wrote, “Including details and statistics about the issue at hand helped establish its severity and make a connection with readers” (Hulbert). Her syntax was very helpful in conveying her specific point.
There were a few areas of her review that could have been improved upon. For example, in order to make her review clearer, Caroline could have defined some words. Defining the word ‘holistic’ would have made her point, of ways to approach health care, more easily understood. Furthermore, there is a sentence describing suggestions for solutions to the issue that is very hard to understand. If this sentence was broken up into two or three separate sentences, it would be much easier to read and understand her point.
An ‘aha’ moment while reading Caroline’s review is discovering that antibiotics can actually be destructive. Although I knew that they would eventually result in some super viruses that could withstand some antibiotics, I did not know how soon this would occur, and how many viruses would be able to withstand treatment. I was unaware that the overuse of antibiotics has already had such disastrous effects. That so many people have died from drug-resistant diseases is staggering. Additionally, since this problem is not widely known about or discussed yet, there is a huge chance that this issue could get much worse before it gets better. Caroline’s review was, aside from a few minor areas, extremely well-written, powerful, and informative.