Antibiotics

The discovery of antibiotics is arguably the most important medical breakthrough in human history. Before antibiotics, bacterial infections were a leading cause of death — a simple scratch could kill, childbirth fever was a death sentence, and surgery was extraordinarily dangerous. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 when he noticed that a mold (Penicillium notatum) had contaminated one of his bacterial cultures and was killing the bacteria around it. His observation launched the antibiotic revolution. Penicillin was developed into a viable medicine by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain during World War II — it saved countless soldiers' lives. Fleming, Florey, and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Antibiotics have saved an estimated 200 million lives. The average life expectancy in developed countries would likely be 20 years shorter without them. However, antibiotic resistance — driven by overuse — threatens to return us to the pre-antibiotic era. Antibiotic-resistant infections already kill 1.27 million people annually and could kill 10 million per year by 2050.