New antibiotic that kills drug-resistant bacteria found in technician's garden
265 comments
·March 31, 2025mentalgear
bestouff
Yeah, like if the current US situation would tend towards food industry safety ...
deepsun
Mmm why US specifically? The most overuse of livestock antibiotics is in India (and India has a lot of drug factories).
chasil
And another major problem is that these antibiotics are found in nature.
Penicillin production was revolutionized when it moved to Peoria, IL and found the famous cantelope:
https://www.pjstar.com/story/news/local/2019/04/25/peoria-pl...
Quarrelsome
US is well known for its questionable high scale farming practices that often have no interest in any sort of animal welfare. Its one of the primary reasons for import controls across Europe for US meat products. It comes up every time the UK or EU negotiate trade deals with the US and came up extremely often during Brexit.
If those import markets were open European producers would struggle to compete with US-agri due to its sheer volume and lack of interest in animal welfare and/or disease control. The UK specifically suffered issues in the past with such issues via "Mad Cow Disease" in the 90s and has attempted to reform its practices as a consequence.
Conversely US agri still seems to ignore these existential nightmares, as most recently seen with Bird Flu and the new administration's troubling ideas with how to deal with it (e.g. the suggestion to avoid culls in order to "find resistent birds").
dartos
really?
because of the current situation in the US...
robotnikman
In general I would agree, but with RFK in charge of that stuff I hope he is able to enact some change
tshaddox
I don't know if there's much merit in opposing antibiotic use in cattle if that position is just a small coincidental component of your broader pro-disease ideology.
shafyy
The people have the power. Why not millions of people are on the fucking streets every day across the US is beyond me.
wormlord
It took 30 years between Lenin's brother being executed by the state, and the Russian revolution. History has momentum, and the gains from the New Deal are still enough that many Americans dont feel comfortable putting their bodies on the line. People's dispositions are a function of their material reality and the reality is that most people haven't internalized the damage yet.
palijer
The average person doesn't have capacity to care about policies that lead to the long term development of drug-resistant bacteria.
We couldn't even convince everyone to wear masks, this won't be an issue people will rise up in mass protests for... People are literally being kidnapped and thrown into detention centers without due process and there are not massive protests.
It takes a lot to make people protest, this ain't a battle for it.
kristiandupont
>The people have the power.
What do you picture will happen because of protests, exactly? That the administration realizes the error of its ways? Because it seems more likely to me that they would use it as an excuse to implement more autocratic measures.
emeril
-as a democratic american - why bother?
-roughly half of the us populace supports the current authoritarian regime and the other half's senators and representatives are largely useless and aren't even doing what they can except for say wearing an adult diaper while giving a 25 hour speech
-I fully plan on eventually moving to canada (or elsewhere) when the time comes - much easier to move than any other option
autoexec
Americans are too busy going to work, with an increasing number of them needing more than one job just to get by. If people protest instead of working they will be fired which means they'll also lose their health insurance.
Since we're all sickened by the poisons corporations put into our food/water/air/products and by a sedentary lifestyle which has been strictly enforced from the age of 5 we wouldn't last long without health insurance. Almost all Americans are just one uncovered medical expense away from bankruptcy and/or homelessness.
Even still, there have been a huge amount of protests recently. There are protests nearly every weekend in and around major cities. All those fired government workers have a lot more time on their hands so I expect that will continue (until their prescription medications start running out anyway)
https://wtop.com/dc/2025/03/vets-protest-trump-doge-and-musk...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/17/anti-t...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/05/anti-t...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/thousands-across-the-u...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/04/04/hands-off-pro...
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/29/nx-s1-5343986/anti-musk-prote...
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MarcelOlsz
Employment tied to healthcare. There's your answer.
meindnoch
Meanwhile doctors in India hand antibiotics out like candy.
aqme28
Though I believe that still pales in comparison to US agricultural use. Based on some rough data sources I think the US uses about 2-3x more antibiotics on livestock than India uses on people.
fc417fc802
The relative usage isn't even the primary issue. The surrounding conditions are. Farms are ideal breeding grounds for quite a few reasons. Add to that rather barbaric practices that can result in treatment periods dragging on quite a bit and the result isn't at all surprising.
AngryData
There is also a not insignificant portion of "animal antibiotics" that people buy to use themselves because they can't afford the 6x markup on "human" antibiotics plus the doctors fees only to get the same pill made in the same factory with a slightly different label slapped on it.
arunc
Antibiotics are not cheap. Make it cheaper and you will see how they will use it on livestock.
DeathArrow
Antibiotics are much cheaper there. They even prescribe it as a preventive measure.
dv_dt
One use of antibiotics in the cattle industry is as a way of increasing weight in livestock. It's theoretically discouraged now for that purpose now in the US, but last I looked there were large loopholes for preventative health purposes in herd management
cromka
WTF
emeril
and those indian made antibiotics sometimes are little different in effectiveness than candy
I dread it when any generic medication I get is made in india or china since the fda doesn't meaningfully regulate/test their stuff
Cthulhu_
Is that true? Since it should not be imported / available let alone perscribed if it doesn't pass the checks. And especially in the US, a doctor wouldn't hand it out if it didn't have the right paperwork because they would be litigated out of their livelihood.
hooverd
I wouldn't be surprised if they bin the good stuff for the export market.
bilsbie
If we have enough drugs with different mechanics bacteria can’t out evolve all of them. It becomes less of a risk.
pfdietz
Sure they can, by being exposed one at a time, developing resistance to each.
hinkley
This is why we use “cocktails” on resistant cases now.
Kill it three different ways at once and it cannot adapt fast enough to leave dna fragments for the next microbe to pick up and continue the work.
scaredginger
There may be some cost to each resistance gained, reducing the fitness of the bacteria
Cthulhu_
That's like saying we just need more nukes to deter other people with nukes from nuking us.
cjbgkagh
Antibiotics are not a deterrence because bacteria cannot be negotiated with. Similarly the concerns of fallout are minimal. The evolved resistance comes at a cost, evolving many resistances comes at many costs. There is a point where the bacteria cannot continue to evolve resistances yet remain competitive in the absence of the antibiotics.
AFAIK there is a new class of molecules specific to thwarting the resistance mechanism that makes the bacteria susceptible again in ways that cannot be out evolved. I'm looking for the general name for this technique - I do remember reading about it.
bilsbie
I don’t see the connection.
cantrecallmypwd
Meat agriculture, as practiced in most of the world on an industrial basis with insufficient regulation, leads to pandemics, evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, climate change, and air, water, and soil pollution.
mmooss
> leads to pandemics
Regarding this detail, there has been only one pandemic recently and it has not been attributed to 'meat agriculture', though it may have involved wild meat.
AngryData
But we can see throughout history that the prevalence of disease follows closely with societies that raise animals. That said, I think it is a poor excuse for advocating against animal husbandry. Disease will always exist and spread, but keeping livestock and pets does increase the chances of it happening a bit.
goodpoint
Routine use of antibiotics is already prohibited in EU and most developed countries.
pmags
Unfortunately, in terms of antifungals both the EU and US are still using tons of them in the context of agriculture [1] which is contributing to drug resistance of human pathogenic fungi [2].
The references below focus on Aspergillus, but there are many such example in other fungal pathogens.
[1] Impact of the use of azole fungicides, other than as human medicines, on the development of azole‐resistant Aspergillus spp. https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/9200
[2] Celia-Sanchez BN, Mangum B, Gómez Londoño LF, Wang C, Shuman B, Brewer MT, Momany M. Pan-azole- and multi-fungicide-resistant Aspergillus fumigatus is widespread in the United States. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2024 Apr 17;90(4):e0178223. doi: 10.1128/aem.01782-23. Epub 2024 Apr 1. PMID: 38557086; PMCID: PMC11022549.
wiz21c
How routine is routine ? I'm sure the agro industry will have a very broad interpretation of that...
friendzis
Roughly preventative use.
hinkley
The US is a lot of space and India is a lot of people and animals. More than twice the land and around three times the population of Europe.
DeathArrow
In most EU countries it is very hard to reach a doctor in decent time unless you can afford to pay a lot.
So you can suffer for weeks with an infection and high fever because the pharmacies won't sell you antibiotics because you don't have a paper from a doctor.
poincaredisk
In which EU country do you live? I moved twice and I never had this experience. Visits this routine can be done almost without delay, sometimes directly off the street inbetween scheduled patients.
StormChaser_5
Here in Ireland I've never had to wait more than a few hours to see a doctor to get a prescription for an infection. Can be a bit harder at the weekend but still seen the same day
johnisgood
Even in Hungary it is easy to reach a doctor. The difficulty is in finding a doctor who gives a damn.
lasergyro
Been in Portugal and Austria. Never had this issue, public doctors only.
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shafyy
Completely agree. Reducing or getting rid of livestock animal agriculture will help with many major challenges we have today, like climate change, loss of biodiversity, animal cruelty, antimicrobial resistance. But hey, gotta have that cheap burger, huh?
We, the people, have the power to improve this situation. Call your representatives, do activism, talk to your friends about it, vote for the right candidates.
palata
> We, the people, have the power to improve this situation. Call your representatives, do activism, talk to your friends about it, vote for the right candidates.
And stop eating meat and fish! It's insane for many reasons even if you don't care about how the animals are treated:
* Biodiversity loss: because we kill everything in the sea by fishing, and we kill everything in the fields for intensive agriculture (which is needed to feed the cattle). And because of deforestation of course. * Antibiotic-resistance: because putting so many animals (fishes or cows) together brings diseases we need to treat. * CO2 emissions: it's super inefficient, we all know it.
Not being a vegetarian in 2025 is just completely unreasonable.
We had Greta Thunberg talking to politicians, but actually I'm looking forward to when kids will ask their parents: "So you know you are killing us in so many ways, and you can't be arsed to eat less meat? Aren't you supposed to care about us?"
kalenx
By this logic, having a car in 2025 is "just completely unreasonable". Taking plane in 2025 is "just completely unreasonable". Use of AC unless life threatening circumstances is "just completely unreasonable". Wasting rainwater and use drinkable water to wash your car (or yourself, actually) is "just completely unreasonable". Eating cashew/almond or other highly water intensive crops grown in a dried out area (California...) is "just completely unreasonable".
Note that apart from the rainwater one, I do none of the above, so I'm not even pleading for myself and my "way of life". I'm just showing how easy it is to boldly state that "it is obvious, we just all have to be reasonable" while, in fact, _not_ being "reasonable" yourself.
AnonC
> Not being a vegetarian in 2025 is just completely unreasonable
Don’t stop there, because being a vegetarian (lacto or ovo) has a larger environmental burden too. Go vegan instead.
DeathArrow
>Not being a vegetarian in 2025 is just completely unreasonable.
Last time I checked humans are omnivores, not herbivores.
I don't want to get ill, acquire some physical weaknesses because there are unreasonable people on the internet.
AngryData
Ehh, I don't think the problem is so much that we eat meat, it is how we produce it. Beef for example is raised primarily with alfalfa, a legume that puts nitrogen in the soil for free rather than having to turn fossil fuels into nitrogen fertilizer or spending substantial fractions of the total world's electricity generation on its production. Plus the fertilizer from the cow shit itself. Its not like we are short on land capable of growing grass, farmland utilization has been dropping for decades, a lot of those places get regular rainfall and alfalfa is nearly free to grow and harvest.
Of course getting people to learn about these things and politicians to adopt sensible policies about it is a whole other game.
whywhywhywhy
I'm fine with the burger being expensive, just want the burger.
shafyy
That's part of the problem. You wanting the burger has all these negative consequences for humans, animals and nature.
palata
Please write this down and keep it. In 10-15 years from now, explain to your kids that you knew, but you proudly didn't give a shit.
exe34
we the people don't want change.
BriggyDwiggs42
Are you arguing against the change itself or making the point that most people don’t care? Sorry to ask I just can’t tell.
DeathArrow
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facile3232
[dead]
logifail
In the 1960s a Canadian research expedition collected soil samples from Easter Island which led to the discovery of rapamycin (aka sirolimus).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirolimus
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9634974/
(Full disclosure - spent my PhD working with macrolides including this one. It's an amazing origin story for a compound...)
hentrep
The discovery of rapamycin is such a fascinating story. Radiolab covered this a few years back - I encourage everyone to give it a listen: https://radiolab.org/podcast/dirty-drug-and-ice-cream-tub
kylehotchkiss
"New antibiotic that kills drug-resistant bacteria" until we freely give the recipe to developing country pharmaceutical companies with no requirement to control distribution so now this antibiotic is given for a simple cough and we're back where we started.
Antibiotic resistance is as much a political problem as a biology one.
mmooss
Developing countries should be deprived of antibiotics, or affordable antibiotics? cui bono? That's too convenient for big pharma companies.
kylehotchkiss
Developing countries should absolutely get the standard set of antibiotics.
Formulas for "antibiotics of last resort" (I would consider a newly designed one in this category) should not be sent to Pharma companies of these countries, rather, the antibiotics should be pre-dosed and mailed over from a country who can maintain the integrity of the formula in a limited fashion to keep their effectiveness high so they can continue to serve patients years into the future.
It sucks, but we've watched antibiotics be abused so badly that babies are born into hospitals where they catch resistant infections nearly right after childbirth. I blame the antibiotics-for-every-cough medical practices common in some countries (I've seen this happen myself!)
noduerme
Naive question here: Why can't new antibiotics be developed by just spraying fields of mushrooms or petri dishes full of fungi with antibiotic resistant bacteria and seeing which ones come up with novel ways to fight them?
looperhacks
Can't answer this particular question. But I remember hearing that developing new antibiotics is not very profitable - To minimize resistance building against new antibiotics, old antibiotics will be used until they are no longer working. So new antibiotics just won't sell that much for now.
DrScientist
About 1/8 of global deaths are due to some sort of bacterial infection, pretty close behind cancer ( 1/6 ).
However for children the number that die of infection in the UK is double that of cancer deaths - ( ~15% versus ~7% ) - and that's in an advanced economy.
Infection is a big problem.
In terms of barriers to making treatments - yes in part there is a problem with the right financial incentives - but it's not the only problem - finding molecules that simultaneously kill bacteria, won't be rapidly evolved around, and are safe to take isn't that easy. Then you have the problem of selectivity between bacteria - how many different sorts will it work with - 'good' verus 'bad' bacteria etc. Then you have the problem of being able to make the molecule at scale etc.
The good news is there is a constant bacteria on bacteria, fungus on bacteria chemical war going on - hence the paper.
DeathArrow
>The good news is there is a constant bacteria on bacteria, fungus on bacteria chemical war going on - hence the paper.
The question is shouldn't we explore it more?
Put dangerous bacteria in contact with other bacteria, fungi, viruses, prisons, viroids, archaea and see what kill them, how and why?
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kjkjadksj
It’s because antibiotic resistance is a misunderstood issue. If one antibiotic doesn’t work, you move on to the next. Maintaining antibiotic resistance is energetically costly to the bacteria. If you aren’t actively selecting with that antibiotic, its resistance will be lost before long as mutants with deficient antibiotic resistance are now more fit and outcompete those with functional antibiotic resistance.
xoxosc
Same goes for chemo therapy. There are many chemo therapies from 60s still being used due to the fact their patent is still owned by certain oligarchy.
andsoitis
> their patent is still owned by certain oligarchy.
I don’t know that it’s helpful to have such a blunt and un-nuanced take.
Theres no “certain oligarchy” that holds a single patent on "chemotherapy" as a broad concept, as it encompasses various chemical treatments for cancer. specific chemotherapy drugs and methods are patented by pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, for example:
- NanOlogy LLC: holds a patent for a method involving injecting large surface area microparticle taxanes directly into the tumor, combined with systemic delivery of immunotherapeutic agents.
- Johns Hopkins University: assigned patent rights for a method related to cancer treatment to Becton-Dickinson & Company, which then sublicensed them to Baxter.
- University of Cincinnati Clermont College: has a patent for breakthrough chemotherapy technology involving nanocarriers.
- Northeastern University: reports a patented molecule, WYC-209, that eliminates cancer cells.
kelnos
> There are many chemo therapies from 60s still being used due to the fact their patent is still owned by certain oligarchy.
They must be making some novel improvements, though. Those original patents from the '60s are long expired by now.
DrScientist
I think it's more likely that active research is on more selective treatments than just better chemo - chemo is a pretty blunt instrument.
Funes-
>{x} is not very profitable
This sums up most of the problems with the late stage capitalism system we are forced to live in.
sejje
How is the research in the non-capitalist environments comparing?
vladms
Blaming difficulty of problems on capitalism alone is disingenuous. There are huge scientific projects that are not profitable and still done because there is a somehow clearer path forward (ex: UKBioBank, CERN, ITER).
When I hear "{x} is not very profitable" I think people mean "we are not sure if we succeed doing {x} and it requires us to divert lots of resources from other things that we think would be more useful".
Pharma companies invest already huge amounts in drugs and many fail anyhow. Quote: "It takes 10 to 15 years and around US$1 billion to develop one successful drug. Despite these significant investments in time and money, 90% of drug candidates in clinical trials fail." (https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/opinions/031222/90-of-drug...)
DeathArrow
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coryrc
Because you'll end up finding bacteriophages and wonder why we're wasting so many lives and much money on antibiotics.
Antibiotics are lazy. Sure, some people have to die, but at least you didn't have to spend any time taking samples of the actual infection.
yyyk
Bacteriophages suck. What some people never tell you is that the body treats phages as invaders and can very effectively get rid of them, they are not adapted to the human environment. These are only good for local treatments, sometimes...
drob518
Well, you actually want the body to clear things. That’s not a problem, it’s a feature. If the phage is able to target the bacteria before it is fully cleared, that’s all you need. Humans have been injected with phages and it has been shown to work. The Soviets actually did a lot of research on it, IIRC. The practical issue that is really challenging for broad phage therapy adoption is that phages are very specific to the bacteria they target. So, you can’t just get injected with any old phage and expect it to work. Instead, you need to catalog all the phages you find in a database and search for one that can target the specific bacteria the patient has been infected with. Phages are simply viruses that target bacteria. You’re awash in them all the time.
pazimzadeh
that seems like a good thing. they only infect bacteria, not humans
phages are found in large quantities in mucus, where they seemingly contribute to the barrier function of mucus by preying on any bacteria that try go cross
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23690590/
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1508355112
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01984-19
this might be adaptable for therapeutics
drob518
To expand on what you wrote, the challenge with phages is that they’re highly specific to certain bacteria, in the same way that some viruses target gorillas and some target humans. We have yet to find broad spectrum phages. While humans have been saved from bacteria by phages, it requires identifying the bacteria strain, looking up appropriate phage that can target that bacteria, cultivating a dose of the phage, etc. So, yea, phages are highly effective, but there are practical challenges. As you say, antibiotics are lazy.
noduerme
Ok, another naive question: Not suggesting we just eat a bunch of bacteriophages, but why wouldn't studying phage mechanisms / proteins for killing bacteria be equally useful?
coryrc
They're viruses, so they work by infecting bacteria and making the bacteria create more of itself.
Antibiotics are found by isolating a compound some i.e. fungi naturally produces. We figure out how to produce the compound and don't fill people with fungi to produce it. Bacteriophages are already the analogy to the compound itself.
So we should be investing heavily in creating and distributing all variety of bacteriophage for all our common bacterial infections. 20k deaths/year from MRSA in the USA alone, 120k infections/year in USA and many of the survivors are left with life-long complications.
kelnos
I'm sure people are studying them. But as GP said, antibiotic are lazy. A doctor would much rather prescribe an antibiotic than do the work to match the specific bacterial infection with the particular phage to deal with it.
And since antibiotics still work (for now), there's not all that much money in phage research. If we do get to the point where we "run out" of antibiotics due to bacterial resistance, I imagine phage research will become a lot more attractive as a destination for research funding.
drob518
This is being studied. Phage research is active.
rscho
Thank you so much for volunteering!
mschuster91
The problem is, phages are recognized by your immune system too. They're effectively single-shot, last ditch efforts.
thegabriele
May I suggest you to watch "Common Side Effects" - an very good animated series loosely based on your premises?
0xEF
It's a fantastic show, but I am not sure it touches on the commenter's point at all. The show is a take on what might happen if a panacea was actually found to exist. That's a bit different than a mere novel antibiotic. I even think the writers are pulling a lot of punch with how violent and insane Big Pharm, Governments and even independent groups would get about control over it.
Still, highly recommend people watch it. Great animation and art style, good writing and characterization, music is pretty rad and it's quite the trip at times.
noduerme
I haven't watched the show, but your description just made me think about the "panacea". Virus-wise, I was obsessed with the idea of the DRACO antiviral concept for years.[0] It's really unclear why funding was pulled for it.
Then again, the idea behind "28 Days Later" was that everyone got a cancer vaccine and turned into zombies...
bluGill
What makes you think there exists a way to fight that isn't harmful the host. Antibiotics work by stopping some biologicial pathway - there are only so many of those in bacteria, you can stop them at any point of course, but you have to stop it. However most of those pathways are also in other lifeforms and so stopping the pathway means you kill not only the bacteria but also human/mushroom.
We have been lucky that we have found a few pathways that are not in human (read mammals) that are in bacteria we worry about. However bacteria just finds a different pathway and odds are that is a pathway in humans and so we can't use it because it would kill humans as well.
throw310822
Or try an evolutionary approach. Artificially enforce some dependency between an organisms' (fungi, bacteria) ability to kill a wide spectrum of targets, and their own continued survival. Let the organism spread on a large matrix in close contact with the targets and zap the areas where the targets are thriving; repeat until you have evolved strains that are effective in destroying the targets. Wonder if it's possible or even been tried.
treyd
I believe there's a group [1] at the MIT Media Lab doing this. Certainly others.
[1] https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/sculpting-evolution/overvie...
hawkjo
Producing large quantities of drug resistant bacteria sounds at least BSL3. The principle might make sense, but one wouldn’t “spray the fields” of something like that.
b3lvedere
I'm absolutely not educated in the world of antibiotics, but i can imagine it might be very difficult to monitor this kind of complex behaviour in a (hopefuly) very secured controlled environment.
trentlott
It's much easier if you invest in observing the natural world that has had hundreds of millions of years to do the work, without the limitation of human intention.
nonrandomstring
The Amazon rainforest has evolved for at least 55 million years. It is likely home to millions of compounds of potential medicinal value. In just 50 years 100 million hectares, 390 billion individual trees 16,000 visible species and (estimated unknown) >100,000 types of non-visible fungi, bacterium, microbes etc, have been destroyed. It's why I found this wide-eyed statement in TFA particularly cringe:
The discovery shows that "there is terrifically interesting stuff
hiding in plain sight".yawnxyz
The road from finding a new molecule with antibiotic properties to passing Phase 3 is... long, arduous and not worth it.
And if you do spend the $1bn to get there, you end up like Achaogen. For anyone in this field, read this teardown of Achaogen: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03452-0
Centigonal
There's some interesting history around scientists collecting soil samples from across the world to look for novel antibiotics.
I learned about it through this video, but there's a lot to explore beyond this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ig6ktJGTWk
KSteffensen
The main problem with development of new antibiotics is not that it requires groundbreaking new science to be invented, but that there is no business case for it. Or at least the business case for spending your R&D on anti-obesity medicine looks a lot better.
mmooss
> The main problem with development of new antibiotics is ... that there is no business case for it.
It sounds like the main problem is a for-profit healthcare system.
Cthulhu_
Yeah, someone else mentioned that as well; if the researched, mass produced and readily available antibiotic is still mostly effective and sells well, spending millions on finding and getting approval for one that would only be used in 1% of cases is not profitable.
Gotta love capitalism.
djmips
It's interesting that this antibacterial molecule is created by a bacteria. So there's one bacteria that's resistant I guess. But maybe that's not a concerning type of bacteria but I hear that bacteria can transfer traits from one species to another...
gilleain
Oh it's completely expected that bacteria create antibiotics - it's part of the low-level chemical warfare that bacteria carry out against each other. Plants as well are chemical factories ('secondary metabolism') that produce all sorts of crazy compounds to kill each other off, as well as insects.
MeteorMarc
Love the British humour! Read the bold heading of the first subsection.
nugzbunny
Wasn’t this how penicillin was found? On some cantaloupe sent in by an average joe?
mtlmtlmtlmtl
Not quite. Alexander Fleming was growing cultures of staph bacteria, went away for some time, and when he came back, found one petri dish had been contaminated with fungus, and that the fungus inhibited the growth of the bacteria. It seems to be unclear where the contamination came from, but the fungus itself was already known to science at the time.
ggm
The cantaloupe is how the US production process in vats got a massive efficiency kick because the mould on the cantaloupe released significantly more penicillin than the prior one. But, this was after the initial discovery.
It's in "Florey: The Man Who Made Penicillin" by Lennard Bickel
null
Most importantly, the use of novel antibiotics must be strictly prohibited in the animal food industry.
This is crucial because the misuse of antibiotics in livestock farming has been a major driver of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a global health crisis. When antibiotics are overused or improperly applied in animals, bacteria can evolve to become resistant, rendering these life-saving drugs ineffective for treating infections in humans and animals alike.
It has always been a perversity that life-saving reserve antibiotics were ever permitted to prop up the grotesque machinery of the modern food industry—a system built on global-scale animal cruelty.