00:00What would you say if we told you that humanity is currently making a collaborative effort to engineer the perfect superbug?
00:07A bug that could kill hundreds of millions of people.
00:10Well, it is happening right now.
00:13We are in the process of creating a superbacterium.
00:23They are among the oldest living things on this planet.
00:26The smallest thing we still consider life, they are masters of survival and can be found everywhere.
00:32Most bacteria are harmless to us.
00:35Your body hosts trillions of them and they help you to survive.
00:38But others can invade your body, spread quickly and kill you.
00:42Millions of people used to die as a result of bacterial infections.
00:46Until we developed a superweapon, antibiotics.
00:49Together with vaccinations, antibiotics revolutionized medicine and saved millions of lives.
00:55Antibiotics kill the vast majority of susceptible bacteria fairly quickly,
01:00leaving only a small group of survivors that our immune system then deals with easily.
01:04How do antibiotics do this?
01:07Imagine a bacterium as a very complex machine with thousands of complex processes going on that keep it alive and active.
01:14Antibiotics disrupt this complex machinery, for example by interfering with its metabolism,
01:19slowing down their growth significantly so they are less of a threat.
01:23Other antibiotics attack DNA and prevent it from being replicated,
01:27which stops bacteria from multiplying, ultimately killing them.
01:30Or by simply ripping the outer layer of the bacteria to shreds so that their insides spill out and they die quickly.
01:37All of this without bothering body cells.
01:40But now, evolution is making things more complicated.
01:44By pure random chance, a small minority of the bacteria invading your body might have evolved a way to protect themselves.
01:52For example, by intercepting the antibiotics and changing the molecule so it becomes harmless.
01:57Or by investing energy in pumps that eject the antibiotics before they can do damage.
02:03A few immune bacteria are not that big a deal because the immune system can take care of them.
02:08But if they escape, they might spread their immunity.
02:12How can bacteria spread immunity?
02:15First of all, bacteria have two kinds of DNA.
02:18The chromosome and small free-floating parts called plasmids.
02:22They can hug each other and exchange those plasmids to exchange useful abilities.
02:27This way, immunity can be spread quickly through a population.
02:31Or in a process called transformation, bacteria can harvest dead bacteria and collect DNA pieces.
02:37This even works between different bacteria species and can lead to superbugs,
02:42bacteria that are immune to multiple antibiotics.
02:45A variety of superbugs already exist in the world.
02:48Especially hospitals are the perfect breeding grounds for them.
02:52Humans have short memories.
02:54The horrors of the pre-antibiotic era have been forgotten.
02:58Today, we treat this powerful medicine as a commodity instead of as the game-changing achievement of science that it is.
03:05This has led to a strange disconnect.
03:08Hundreds of millions of people still don't have access to antibiotics in developing countries,
03:13while in other parts of the world, antibiotics are prescribed too freely and taken without care.
03:18Antibiotics should be a last resort drug, not something you take because your cold is annoying.
03:24Another serious problem is antibiotic use in meat production.
03:29At any particular point in time, humanity holds between 20 and 30 billion animals as livestock.
03:35To make meat cheaper, many animals are held in horrible conditions, in very tight spaces and in unhygienic conditions,
03:42the perfect breeding ground for a disease.
03:45So many animals are given antibiotics to kill as many bacteria as possible and prevent them from getting sick,
03:52because a cheeseburger has to cost a dollar.
03:54Unsurprisingly, as a result of this system, we have created more and more bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.
04:02To counteract this, we use different antibiotics and we have another secret weapon.
04:07There are specific antibiotics that are used to wipe out bacteria that have developed resistance.
04:12There are strict rules for using these to avoid the creation of a super bacterium.
04:17Or so we thought.
04:19In late 2015, scary news arrived from China.
04:23Resistance against colistin, a last-ditch antibiotic, had been discovered.
04:27Colistin is an old drug and was rarely used because it can damage the liver.
04:31So there was little resistance against it, which made it a great antibiotic of last resort
04:36for certain complex infections that occur in hospitals to fight bacteria that have become immune to a whole bunch of other drugs.
04:43Bacteria resistance to colistin is very, very bad news.
04:47It might destroy a last line of defense and lead to a whole lot of dead people.
04:52How could this happen?
04:54Millions of animals in Chinese pig farms have been given colistin for years.
04:58Resistant bacteria developed, spreading first from animal to animal and then to humans without being noticed.
05:04On an average day, there are over 100,000 flights on Earth, kind of connecting every human on the planet.
05:10By creating the modern world, we have also built the infrastructure for a dangerous pandemic.
05:16Still, we don't need to panic just yet.
05:19Bacteria evolve, humans do research.
05:22New antibiotics are developed as old ones become obsolete.
05:25Technology is advancing every day.
05:28The problem is real and serious, but the fight is far from over.
05:32If humanity plays its cards right, superbugs might turn out to be not very super after all.
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