Infections become impossible to treat.
The passage confirms that resistance arises naturally via spontaneous mutations, meaning it can happen independently of human error.
Antibiotics have saved hundreds of millions of lives since the discovery of penicillin in 1928. However, the overuse and misuse of these drugs in humans and animals have accelerated a natural evolutionary process: bacteria developing resistance. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death.
(Justification: Paragraph F highlights the "economic bottleneck" and explains that pharmaceutical companies lack financial incentives because antibiotics are short-duration drugs.) Infections become impossible to treat
The growing resistance of many bacterial strains to the curative effects of antibiotics is so concerning that it has been referred to, in some quarters, as one of the greatest threats to our continued existence on Earth. The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as one of the world’s most urgent public health challenges. Its Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has starkly warned that this crisis “is outpacing advances in modern medicine,” threatening the health of families across the globe.
At its core, antibiotic resistance is a natural evolutionary process. When a population of bacteria is exposed to an antimicrobial drug, the majority of susceptible organisms are eradicated. However, a minute fraction may possess random genetic mutations that render them immune to the drug's mechanisms. These surviving "superbugs" then multiply, passing on their resistant traits to subsequent generations. More alarmingly, bacteria can exchange genetic material horizontally across different species via plasmids—tiny rings of DNA. This means a harmless environmental bacterium can transfer resistance genes directly to a lethal human pathogen, accelerating the spread of immunity at an exponential rate.
Antibiotic resistance (AMR) has emerged as one of the most critical public health crises of the 21st century. Often featured in high-level IELTS Academic Reading passages, this topic covers complex biological, societal, and economic themes. Understanding the nuances of AMR is not only vital for global health but also essential for achieving top scores in reading comprehension tasks that test understanding of cause-and-effect, factual accuracy, and argumentative structure. However, the overuse and misuse of these drugs
A) environmental B) C. difficile C) growth promotion D) fungal E) implementation F) economic G) AWaRe H) phage I) viral J) pandemic K) cancer L) water
Paragraph E explicitly states the opposite: "Unlike chronic medications that patients must take daily for decades, antibiotics are typically prescribed for short courses of one to two weeks."
Paragraph E details the financial hurdles for the pharmaceutical sector, explaining that chronic condition drugs are far more lucrative than short-course antibiotics, making R&D costs hard to recoup. According to global health estimates
The economic and humanitarian consequences of failing to address AMR are profound. According to global health estimates, drug-resistant infections already claim hundreds of thousands of lives annually. If current trends persist unchecked, it is projected that by the year 2050, superbugs could kill up to 10 million people each year, surpassing cancer as a leading cause of mortality. Financially, the burden will be catastrophic, potentially costing the global economy upwards of $100 trillion due to prolonged hospital stays, intensive treatments, and lost workforce productivity.
A description of how resistant bacteria can transmit genetic material to other species.
