Have Antibiotics Become Passé?

The Azrieli Faculty of Medicine Tenth Anniversary festivities opened on March 24, 2021 with a timely and interesting Zoom webinar, the first of a series of four. Led by Prof. Daniel Glikman, Vice Dean for Pre-clinical Studies, the webinar discussed antibiotic use and questioned whether we have reached an end of an era. After an introduction by the Dean, Prof. Karl Skorecki, Prof. Glikman, a pediatrician specializing in pediatric infectious diseases who has been with the Faculty since its founding, brought up many questions, including:

• How did antibiotics develop?
• How widespread is antibiotic use, among humans and in agriculture?
• How does antibiotic resistance come into being, how serious is it, and what can we do about this?
• How has antibiotic use and misuse changed since its discovery?
• What is bacteria and how do they behave?
• Is this is local or a global challenge, and why?
• Why aren't new antibiotics being developed?
• How can we help the situation?

For those of you who missed the webinar, it can be viewed here (in Hebrew).