One of the best – and scariest – things that can happen in academia is when your research is picked up by the mainstream media. On the one hand, it can help you engage with a far wider group of people than usual, but you may lose control over your work’s messaging in the process. 

So, many of us in the AMR community were bemused to see Alan Partridge, the British comedy stalwart, take on antibiotic resistance in the first episode of a new BBC parody news show. Of course, humour is subjective, but we took a look at the main AMR assertions in the show, and fact-checked them:

1. There was an outbreak of cholera in Soho in 1854, that started due to contaminated water from a single water pump

Half true. It’s true that there was a cholera outbreak in Soho in 1854. And the Broad Street Pump is displayed outside our very own John Snow lecture theatre at LSHTM. But how much of the legendary John Snow story is myth, not truth?  Read this 2017 blog by Associate Professor Alex Mold to find out.

1. The discovery of cholera as a water-borne illness paved the way for the creation of antibiotics

Not directly. While naturally-occurring antibiotics have been used by humans for millennia (there are textual references to mouldy bread being used as a treatment by societies in ancient Egypt, Serbia, China, and Greece, among others), the first examples we have of antibiotics being used in recent history are not for cholera but for Treponema andStreptococcus. In fact, these two genera of bacteria were targeted by the first ‘modern’ antimicrobial agents in the late nineteenth century, well before Alexander Fleming’s now-famous 1928 discovery of Penicillin.
You can read this to learn more about antimicrobials from the ancient to modern eras.

1. Antibiotics are a remedy against bacteria that initially seemed infallible

Partly true. Antibiotics are indeed active against bacteria, and they were initially perceived by many to be a wonder drug.  There were advertisements put out by a pharmaceutical company for Penicillin during World War II showing an injured soldierwith the tag line “Thanks to Penicillin…He Will Come Home!”  However, the risk of antibiotic resistance has been understood since that era as well. In 1945 Alexander Fleming prophesied the danger of selecting for antibiotic resistance in his Nobel Prize speech, famously saying:
 
Mr. X. has a sore throat. He buys some penicillin and gives himself, not enough to kill the streptococci but enough to educate them to resist penicillin. He then infects his wife. Mrs. X gets pneumonia and is treated with penicillin. As the streptococci are now resistant to penicillin the treatment fails. Mrs. X dies. Who is primarily responsible for Mrs. X’s death? Why Mr. X whose negligent use of penicillin changed the nature of the microbe.  Moral: If you use penicillin, use enough.

Of course, the drivers of antibiotic resistance are not exclusively under-dosing. Read more here.

4. Handwashing can mitigate antibiotic resistance

True! While many technological advances purport to reduce the risk of the transmission of AMR, particularly in hospitals, one of the most effective interventions remains handwashing with soap.  Read more here and here