Documentário "A Aventura do Antibiótico"

you you introducing the most feared living creature in the world considered to be man's greatest enemy on the surface it seems highly primitive but in fact it's an astonishingly efficient and sophisticated creature a complex machine how to colonize our planet an enzyme factory capable of foiling all of its opponents cunning tricks as it relentlessly pursues what we see as a purely destructive mission of microscopic proportions the microbe is too tiny to be seen by the naked eye but in terms of numbers it's a giant our bodies are teeming with bacteria our skin crawls with billions

of these invisible visitors they're on our hair roots and in the corners of our mouths and eyes the microbe divides every 20 minutes forming huge armies of its kind clinging colonies of infinitely reproducing clones more than anything bacteria adore hard danfa mucous membranes and our 37 degree Celsius bodies our bodies are perfect havens to these organisms they have colonized them since time immemorial along with mud and the seven seas the more they have to eat the more numerous they become in fact our bodies contain ten times more microbes themselves we can even say that within

our own bodies we are a minority compared to these creatures paradoxically for such a small being the microbes sometimes seems like a giant towering over our tiny fragile structures most bacteria are harmless some are even an absolute necessity for our organism for example food would remain undigested in our intestines if these billions of helpful little workers didn't break it down of all the numerous species of bacteria only a few are dangerous to the human body they produce toxins and multiply causing health threatening infections Staphylococcus animal carcass and streptococcus cause blood poisoning pneumonia and tuberculosis diseases

that have riddled the history of humanity our history is scarred by the merciless war waged between man and bacteria since the beginning of time more than anything the microbe represents trauma it's the painful memory of all those we have helplessly watched die before our very eyes over thousands of years of epidemics the invisible enemy has claimed countless victims mainly among the weaker and poorer members of society it's as if the microbe specializes in causing grief among families and I hope this community so it's hard to imagine what life was like before antibiotics were around it

is he qsu in the 17th 18th and 19th centuries life expectancy was 30 to 40 years of age my people were usually killed by infections tuberculosis or pneumonia and all kinds of illnesses that are easily cured today it was also very frequent for newborn babies to die of infections that way come on defi so death by infection was a common thing and there was virtually no treatment available for it a perfect example is syphilis in an example the CPGs given Martin there was a high mortality rate for this infectious illness completely the treatment for this

disease used to be mercury salts which were extremely toxic it is said extremel toxic nadis it was even a saying one night with Venus a lifetime with Mercury Milk you AAHA sweetener arsenic and heavy metal salts were tried after that many people don't even know that up until 1945 doctors even used a parasite responsible for causing malaria called Plasmodium on up in plus mu liugong pool no antibiotic discovery process took a new turn when scientists realized how bacteria and viruses influenced the spread of infectious diseases back in 1880 nobody knew where infectious illnesses came from

they thought they were of genetic origin they had vague ideas about contagion but bacteria is a source of infection we're totally unknown as one fix you see you Pasteur and Robert Koch in particular discovered the infectious agents responsible for tuberculosis and cholera all the big diseases were discovered around this time then the next problem was to find out how to treat such diseases which almost always killed their victims for multi thanks to the first modern scientists we were finally able to identify our microscopic enemies but knowing how to stop their proliferation was a whole different

story man also realized how keen microbes are to live among us crawling around us at close quarters and enjoying the dirt we leave behind bacteria also love crowds they're always eager for a chance to jump on you victims in moments of close contact we then began to view even the most harmless of actions as a potential source of danger microbes will go to any lengths to extend their empire body contact saliva and sneezes are not their only means of transportation they have also developed a few methods of their own enabling them to invest new territories

bacteria have a particular liking for war and human Exodus as these are prime opportunities for it to multiply among the masses and single out choice famine struck victims they also have a liking for our large industrialized cities as these are synonymous with huge concentrations of humans the spread of the modern world gave bacteria new techniques for moving faster and further afield allowing them to continue sponging off human hardship in order to spread their empires during this very long period before antibiotics were invented bacteria were man's archenemies and he tried everything and anything to come up

with a miracle cure for these tiniest of tyrants it would not be before the 1920s that sir Alexander Fleming would discover a first remedy antibiotics have become so common in daily life that modern man sometimes thinks they've been around forever the antibiotic is the first cure capable of striking down the microbe the only truly magical remedy in all of man's history long awaited by doctors and patients alike it's the key to modern society a world where microbes are almost a thing of the past in the space of just a few years the antibiotic became one

of the pillars of the modern world man can no longer do without antibiotics its enzymes are capable of achieving hitherto impossible feats and at rating the microbe wall and killing the bacteria from the inside the results are nothing short of spectacular Western man has been quick to forget about the past when microbes had the upper hand he has become an antibiotic addict who demands immediate relief people have almost begun to take health for granted and for a modern society constantly on the go the miracle fever reliever has become one of man's best friends for years

now we have been using antibiotics non-stop to cure almost all illnesses we wouldn't even consider taking a trip without packing the leftovers of a past prescription for a cold or a stomach bug people have been doing this for years but little did we know it would cause one of the biggest ecological problems in recent decades for sixty years thousands of tons of antibiotics were dumped into the environment but while we were busy consuming huge amounts of antibiotics the bacteria were patiently preparing their counter-attack you know my hopes of us you'll present is something a very

interesting observation was made by a key player in this process one of Cox students named Paul ugly he observed sections of tissue from patients who had died of infection under the microscope they were found to contain bacteria he colored them with dyes derived from a chemical product of coal called aniline and he noticed that the tissues sometimes remained unaffected but that the bacteria always changed color well he concluded that it may be possible to kill bacteria selectively using colorings outfit in fact the discovery of antibiotics has a lot to do with colorings combate abba he'll

do sit down just reading so inspired by the coloring industry researchers started testing tar wastes 200 chemical products or more LLL not who've a Don is in the 1860s or 70s they found various products capable of reducing fevers visitor left give tool to Tsukuba all these compounds came from carbon such as carbon waste or tar and as we descend Okuma then they looked into the possibility of using colorings to combat infection now fix you Evan Perez wasn't problem free as some colorings are very toxic but they did realize they could be used to kill microorganisms

the about heal to see the big pharmaceutical companies that had sprung up along the Rhone and Reyn rivers were instrumental in this in fact the discovery of the coloring stimulated research handle a stimulant lucious antibiotics did not make their debut in the 1930s as we have often believed they date back to the origins of the planet three billion years ago they are as old as bacteria in fact bacteria actually invented antibiotics for about two or three billion years bacteria were the only inhabitants of Earth if we use Paris's Eiffel Tower as a timeline for the

history of the earth bacteria would have appeared at the first floor they remained alone on earth for a very very long time in fact until about the third floor the first dinosaurs would have appeared slightly higher and humanity would hardly even represent the thickness of the coat of paint covering the tip of the tower for 99% of its history our planet has been inhabited exclusively by bacteria in ancient times earth was totally covered in water forming what is known as the primeval soup single-celled algae reigned supreme they loved water and light and already carried out

photosynthesis Amelie caused more equity by one of the major changes that were introduced was an ingenious invention known as photosynthesis was evident aggr you've shown it there is solar energy that radiates onto the earth is just about the only source of external energy Susan city energy do I think this energy has to be converted and bacteria are the only living organisms capable of doing that elf Allah and by doing that yes by changing carbon gas into oxygen they provide us with energy and that is what enables us to breathe metalder whispering see Godzilla you need

if you look at the universe as it stands today an earth is the only planet known to contain life II sir na most evil and what really sets Earth apart from other planets is that it has oxygen in the atmosphere and that oxygen comes from microbes such as algae and bacteria I did by performing photosynthesis for billions of years bacteria brought about the greatest ecological revolution of all time they gave off huge amounts of oxygen wiping out most living species at the time in other words other bacteria only the microbes that were able to resist

the gas survived when the quantity of oxygen stabilised a layer of ozone formed around our planet shielding it from high-energy ultraviolet rays it took the bacteria several billion years to create the atmosphere we now breathe mankind and every animal species on earth would never have existed without their painstaking work the diamond vessel in the same way we need energy in order to perform any physical movement Zambia not only boosts what energy you consume oh I don't do sweet sugar for example but then we need energy to burn that sugar so we get the energy we

need for this from mitochondria present in ourselves don't listen to our muscle cells for example well we now know with certainty that these mitochondria are none other than bacteria and all you have to do a very long time ago maybe two billion years ago bacteria were absorbed by cells it was where they took up residence a kind of symbiosis was established between the bacteria alter and the cells that had consumed them immutable now a mitochondrion the bacterium needed the cell in order to live in return this mitochondrion bacteria inside the cell enabled the cell to

utilize energy which it could not produce by itself when you find Emma the occupying bacterium allowed its host to live in an oxygen filled environment and so emerged the very first animal cell the common ancestor of all animals and humans on this planet all inhabitants of planet Earth have a bacterium in each and every cell enabling them to breathe oxygen but the genetic genius of microbes goes even further in this primitive world where each microbe jealously defended its territory and its food from rivals bacteria actually invented the antibiotic an antibiotic is an enzyme produced by

single-celled organisms to destroy their opponents in this hostile world where each microorganism wages a territorial war bacteria attack and counter-attack each other with enzymes the antibiotic is an ingenious invention courtesy of the microbe man is also keen on territorial conquest but during the historical period between the two world wars he had still not found a cure for bacterial disease before he'd even made this major discovery in the field of Health he was already engaging in bacteriological warfare man learned how to kill with microbes before he even knew how to defend himself from them mankind may

not have bacterial enzymes for conquering territories but it certainly has other technical means the 1930s were a very active period in terms of scientific research man's dream of ruling the world was stronger than ever before you in 1920 humble bacteriologist by the name of Alexander Fleming made a very strange discovery in his lab at st. Mary's Hospital London after applying his own lacrimal fluid in other words his own tears to a German culture he noticed the appearance of large indentations in the bacterial colony he named this phenomenon lysis and went on to develop Lyceum's from

tears and nasal mucus but this first natural man-made antibiotic was ineffective on truly pathogenic bacteria and the project was abandoned but eight years later in July 1928 Fleming returning home from vacation was to make one of the greatest discoveries of all time before leaving he had left some Petri jaws of staphylococci cultures in his lab a strange mold had grown on them the English scientist realized that he had stumbled onto something huge the fungus had actually prevented the bacteria from spreading meanwhile fellow bacteriologist Merlin Price was also carrying out research on natural antibiotics and was

intrigued by Fleming's discovery Fleming recognized the lysis phenomenon he had observed eight years before the mold he had just discovered was able to kill bacteria the English scientist had just found what would be called the magic bullet the miracle remedy that doctors from all over the world had been waiting for in the days that followed penicillin revealed its revolutionary properties one of them being that it was not in the least bit dangerous to animals before long Fleming was able to carry out his first tests on human material around this time his assistant Stuart Craddock was

suffering from continuous colds and conjunctivitis he became the first man on earth to benefit from penicillin we don't know whether or not young Craddock was cured by the treatment but he certainly suffered no adverse effects he was extremely lucky and so was the medical field because we now know that in nature only one antibiotic in a thousand presents no risk for humans Seve you know wild mushrooms and certain bacteria actually produce antibiotics naturally soldier to soldier shrimp soil is literally teeming with antibiotic manufacturing fungi the me cago needs me even this struggle is the microorganisms

natural way of competing with each other a lulu Penicillium do feel the Penicillium fleming found is a soil microorganism meta was unfortunately Fleming wasn't a chemist to do so the raw product he came up with was very unstable and he was unable to show that it could be injected effectively position yep a Santander 20 1932 or 1933 he gave up all his research into penicillin Vietnam the film what the project needed was a chemist in its ranks combined with a businessman someone who could get things moving dole good ormond of Siham nerve in 1939 Florie

started sifting through write-ups on antibiotic related substances TV tone tea Beauty kylajo Tuvalu pubic SEO when he came across Fleming's publication he realized there might be something in it he looked with this so that's when he hired an ingenious man by the name of Ernst chain who joined Flores teams were Nicky food dutifully yakumo's Shane was the one who started off by purifying penicillin a fluently Florrie then tested this purified substance on my saliva Dakota he managed to get a few contacts going and formed a team known as the Oxford Greek then he went and

knocked at every available door announcing that he had come up with a highly active substance named penicillin originally discovered by Fleming which was worth investing in the English government and industrialists turned him down indeed no so in 1940 he went to see the American which proves successful because the Rockefeller Foundation gave him financial backing in the form of about five thousand pounds quite a sum at that time this allowed him to really get his research underway then he managed to persuade several American companies to produce penicillin industrially yokomo sahaja yogini CD don't worry about it

hurting them penicillin injected rabbits are the healthiest in the world they seem to enjoy their job of serving mankind they said tornado facade way up believe it or not Florie teamed up with an industrial beer brewers he-said she-said will be home he needed to produce penicillin on a wide scale and brewers were useful because they had huge fermenting vats for cultivating bacteria and because they had all the necessary equipment to turn the liquid obtained into freeze-dried powder form that's how it all began please with us with you he managed to get institutional support and doctors

started trying out penicillin is a medicine from February or March 1941 with very positive results I saw it was good news and that's who then in 1941 along came Pearl Harbor let to learn from that moment American industry and the army invested all their energy in penicillin producing it on a massive scale in a duly a disposition at first it was issued to the American troops then much later it was made available to the general public site de la Moine revolution it was a revolution boosted by the Japanese attack on the US troops it jolted

the American army and government to back penicillin very actively lipid Ishii moved in close to the obstacle barricade and dropped their ramps oops waited through deep water to the shore many never reached we landed more medical field units the severely wounded were carried to the relative safety of outlying hospital ships and transports ana sillens abe ditz first few thousand lives the miracle of Medicine had made its debut you fool what you have to realize what penicillin meant in 1945 which is when it came to France it was so expensive that when one patient was treated

with it their urine was collected and the penicillin contained in it was purified and injected into another patient vanilla this went on from 1945 to 1947 when penicillin was a very scarce commodity finish eating but the miracle drug did not eradicate all of man's bacterial enemies one plague remained impervious to Fleming's discovery misty one major disease tuberculosis was widespread at the time it was responsible for a lot of deaths at the beginning of the 1900s Ludovic Jim Schick before the discovery of antibiotics capable of destroying streptococcus man's only means a fighting disease was health and

hygiene tuberculosis wrecked havoc among the poorer members of society directly before and after the Second World War with no effective medication available sanatoriums served basically just to keep the sick out of circulation each white bed is filled with a young feverish body asking to be kept alive tuberculosis is severely struck children weakened by war six months of rations and for heating are to blame for their condition the anti-tuberculosis stamp you will all be buying this week will lengthen the lives of French children give generously our offspring must be able to breathe pure air to have

their youth health and optimism restored so they can grow up and keep our country strong about Hilda dude is anything about 1942 onwards when penicillin gained success researchers systematically started working on soil bacteria bacteria were isolated then hundreds of thousands of microorganisms were screamed he only said this is still done today in an effort to find a substance that will naturally produce an antibiotic when in contact with a specific microorganism Liefeld is the antibiotic is then purified and tested for toxicity and the tuberculosis in the case of tuberculosis a very intriguing observation was made me

dr. Sarah it was observed that the microbes responsible for causing tuberculosis could survive perfectly well in soil but that they were destroyed within 15 days when placed in manure it was obvious that manure sewer water contained microorganisms which had a very strong effect on the TB germs in the best utility vehicles it don't heal so researchers started investigating further a macro biologist specializing in soil bacteria named Waxman went on to discover streptomycin with the help of his student they tested hundreds and hundreds of strains of the streptomyces fungus is one of the strains was found

to produce a particular antibiotic which was proven to kibbutz tuberculosis they named it streptomycin after the fungus then notified that I've been awarded a Nobel Prize in medicine I feel particularly proud for the field of science which I represent microbiology by striking down tuberculosis and meningitis mankind had achieved the second true revolution in the medical field the Dakotas streptomycin injections that resulted from this research proved to be a very efficient cure it limits doctors were so amazed by the results achieved on the first patients treated that they thought they must have diagnosed the illnesses wrongly

to talk idioms they thought it couldn't possibly have been tuberculosis meningitis because it's so hard to treat nowadays tuberculosis meningitis is a hundred percent curable so it's hard to imagine the impact the treatment had at the time when doctors had been so used to seeing patients die from the disease mu head professor and a salon and streptomycin were to become the cornerstones in the antibiotic empire by the end of World War two after many years of restraint the pharmaceutical labs started investing heavily in research and production these molecules were used to make new improved antibiotics

man naively started to believe he had done away with the microbe for good he phobia it's important to understand from the very beginning antibiotics were seen as miraculous remedies doll satin melody kichu up until then some diseases had been killing infected patients very easily take the example of pneumonia from pneumococcus which killed 90% of victims in its most severe form thank you then all of a sudden with just a few injections of penicillin the death rate was reversed to just 10% a complete turnaround on the executive milk of the equivalent today would be if a

medication were to be isolated to cure cancer very fast even for the severus of cases many and Kemal Pasha used water to add to that the fact that the discovery of antibiotics was full of interesting anecdotes involving some amazing people some of them like Fleming or later Florrie were very charismatic and you can understand why it left a very deep impression on a whole generation of doctors oppression a legend Lisp read omits undo to continue on after because of the renewed peace the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm was the most solemn it had been since

had been created in 1901 King Gustav v rewarded English scientist Alexander Fleming and his assistants with a huge sum of money for their work in discovering penicillin showers thunderstorms literally already hopefully severe thunderstorm showers at some dinner yeah it's already from the 50s and 60s onwards antibiotics naturally and effortlessly became an essential ingredient of modern living didn't get all the soap out last night didn't you little by little the microbe magically disappeared from our daily fears basking in the luxury of antibiotics we entered a fantasy world free of infection we thought that one of the

darkest periods of medical history was finally behind us they look savage once they realized what startling results penicillin could achieve doctors started wanting to use antibiotics every time they thought they might be of some benefit to their patients young von benefic ISA pathya know this brought a huge increase in consumption which was justified by the extraordinary effects of this drug community commotion evasion yeah - Lily that saw what was happening and started using antibiotics on animals again monotone and they got the same miraculous results in the process on a farming is also affected by some

bacterial diseases a certain number of which can be eradicated with antibiotics so farmers also started using these drugs in certain cases you could do he come so few designee and and so over the years antibiotics were perceived as unique trouble-free remedies which into the bargain were hardly toxic yo new critics from open taxi they are toxic but only to a very slight degree made merely - o-ring as a general rule they only yield positive results it is advanced on blue eye Gandhi because of this miracle combination of very great effectiveness and very little toxicity it

was generally thought that we could continue using antibiotics as much as we wanted equal token fool a new plea to cure whatever we wanted on humans and animals and in farming without suffering any harmful consequences Delita Paulo and that's exactly how the greatest ecological upheaval of all time occurred without us even knowing for sixty years thousands of tons of antibiotics have been poured into our environment via our bodies but also via streams rain and soil and the meat in the fish we eat Penta biotics have now taken up residence on our planet in no uncertain

terms new boosts on average every human being consumes about 10 grams of antibiotics per year honey now as you don't the result is tons and tons of antibiotics dumped into the environment now bacteria do not like this one a little bit it causes I'm stressed yes and they're going to keep on resisting to the very end this is the existing bacteria have developed various techniques of resistance one of them involves blocking their pores to stop the antibiotic from penetrating their protective membrane some resistant germs have another way of fending off an antibiotic attack they send

out special enzymes to destroy the medication before it can reach its target yet another counter-attack technique consists of allowing the antibiotic inside its cell wall then using a sophisticated pumping system to eject to the intruder before it has time to act nudism as my hump in 40 or 50 years we humans have come up with fifty to a hundred different antibiotics fill it with hookah see and we see this is quite a feat imagining but in the same time span microbes have invented just as many ways to resist our antibiotics season two Beauty bacteria's ability

to learn so fast comes from an age-old gift that is truly amazing although they have the reputation of being the most primitive species on the planet these living organisms can transfer particles of DNA to each other simply on contact in other words when one germ knows a technique for thwarting a particular antibiotics attack it can pass the genetic code on to another individual for it to use in turn this is how bacteria of all varieties including some pathogenic ones have become resistant to several antibiotics over the years bacteria have had no trouble in developing and

sharing antibiotic resistance techniques naturally because they have always lived in an antibiotic rich environment and have themselves developed antibiotics in the first place it come because we have used antibiotics in a wide variety of ways on human beings animals and farming alike it has sweepingly affected the bacterial world that's why the ecological impact is so great if antibiotics had selectively killed only pathogenic bacteria there would hardly have been any problem the hitch comes from the fact that bacteria as a whole have grown more resistant to antibiotics and have in turn taught disease provoking bacteria the

secrets of their resistance in a resistant in the soil and in the air bacteria keep on doing what they've always done sharing acquired genes of resistance the difference today is the speed with which the exchanges are carried out and the distance is covered by the germs as well as the resistance genes they carry resistant bacteria are conquering our entire planet right beneath our eyes