Part one of term paper
During 1997, an event doctors had been fearing finally occurred. In three geographically separate patients, an often deadly bacterium, Staphylococcus aureus, responded poorly to a once reliable antidote--the antibiotic vancomycin. Fortunately, in those patients, the bacteria remained susceptible to other drugs and was eradicated. But the appe ...

Part two of term paper
... of hospital-acquired infections, has thus moved one step closer to becoming an unstoppable killer. The looming threat of incurable S. aureus is just the latest twist in an international public health nightmare: increasing bacterial resistance to many antibiotics that once cured bacterial diseases readily. Ever since antibiotics became widely available in the 1940s, they have been hailed as miracle drugs -- magic bullets able to eliminate bacteria without doing much harm to the cells of treated indi ...