Could antibiotics stop working? Yes – but the biggest danger isn't prescription-happy GPs

抗生素会失效吗？会，但最大的危险并非来自热衷于开药的医生（译者注：GP 指 General Practitioner，意为“全科医生”）

To prevent a catastrophic failure of the drugs modern medicine relies on, look to animal farming in middle-income countries

为防止现代医学所依赖的抗生素失效而引发灾难性后果，需密切关注中等收入国家的畜牧业

If the antibiotics we use to treat infections ever stopped working, the consequences would be catastrophic.

如果人类赖以对抗感染的抗生素彻底失效，其后果将不啻于一场灾难。

It is estimated that the use of antibiotics adds about 20 years of life expectancy for every person worldwide (on average).

据估算，抗生素的普及使全球人均预期寿命延长了约20年。

As the King's Fund put it, if we lose antibiotics, "we would lose modern medicine as we know it".

正如国王基金会所言，一旦失去抗生素，“我们所熟知的现代医学体系将土崩瓦解”。

Doctors, public health experts and governments take the threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) very seriously, yet the problem appears to be getting worse.

面对抗生素耐药性（AMR）的威胁，尽管医生、公共卫生专家和各国政府都严阵以待，但这一问题似乎仍在恶化。

A report from the National Audit Office in February finds that out of five domestic targets set in 2019 to tackle AMR, only one has been met – to reduce antibiotic use in food-producing animals. Others, such as the target to reduce drug-resistant infections in humans by 10%, haven't made much progress; in fact, these infections have actually increased by 13% since 2018.

英国国家审计署今年二月发布的报告显示，2019年制定的五项 AMR 防控指标中，仅“减少可食用动物的抗生素使用量”一项达标，而“将人类耐药菌感染病例减少10%”等指标则进展甚微——事实上，自2018年以来，这类感染病例不减反增，上升了13%。

AMR is often misunderstood. I have often heard people say "I'm afraid of taking antibiotics and becoming resistant to them." But AMR isn't about individuals becoming resistant to antibiotics. It's about pathogens – most often bacterial infections but also viruses, fungi and parasites – evolving to become resistant to our current drugs, so that the infections they cause become untreatable.

公众对 AMR 普遍存在认知误区。我常听有人说“我担心服用抗生素会产生耐药性”。但耐药性并不是指个体对药物产生耐受，而是指病原体（多为细菌，当然也包括病毒、真菌和寄生虫）进化出对现有药物的抵抗能力，导致其引发的感染无药可治。