• Question: what drugs are the most dangerous xx

    Asked by deer42gas to Sudhin, Sergio, Katie, Frances, Diarmuid, Aoife on 18 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Katie Fala

      Katie Fala answered on 18 Nov 2019:


      It depends, there is a famous saying by Paracelsus which goes as follows: “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison” so basically anything can kill you, what matters is the mechanism of action and the concentration of the substance.

      As a microbiologist I’m probably biased, but antibiotics if not used prudently and wisely can be very dangerous and they accelerate antimicrobial resistance i.e bacteria who cannot be killed by the antibiotics that we have. This is projected to kill 10 million people every year by 2050.

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