Top public-health officials descended on Capitol Hill last Thursday to sound the alarm about a grim future without antibiotics. These life-saving drugs are losing their mojo as germs adapt to them. It’s a process scientists call antibiotic resistance.
In the US, 2 million people a year catch drug-resistant infections, 23,000 die and the toll “is growing, ” says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Most are hospital patients.
