Antibiotics Creating "Bacterial Monsters"

The next time you’re contemplating flushing your prescription medication down the toilet, you may want to consider the “bacterial monsters” they have the potential to spawn.

A study published in this month’s Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine suggests that disposed antibiotics may be facilitating the evolution and proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria in sharks.

According to professor of veterinary clinical medicine Mark Mitchell, who found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in seven species of shark, “Bacteria exposed to the drugs develop resistance,” so “we have the risk of creating these bacterial monsters."