May be coming to an end:

My generation is only the second to live its entire lifespan in the age of antibiotic miracles. My grandparents were born into a world where the son of the President of the United States could die from an infected blister he got while playing tennis without socks. It was a world where almost everyone over the age of 60 who got pneumonia died (hence it’s moniker: “the old man’s friend”.) Where surgery was a deadly risk and deaths from childbirth were all too common.

Most of the lurid abortion statistics that you hear about hundreds or thousands of women dying every year from illegal abortions come from that era too; while the number of deaths was undoubtedly elevated by unsanitary conditions at back-alley abortionists, even abortions in hospitals would have been extraordinarily risky, because the risk of infection could never entirely be eliminated. Most of the decline in deaths from abortions actually came before the Roe decision, and the timing makes it clear that this was mostly due to antibiotics, with a small assist from better blood banking. All of which is to point out that in a world without antibiotics, you’d have to think real hard before undertaking any sort of elective invasive procedure.

For my parents’ generation, it was normal to lose cohorts while growing up — for mine, it was unusual. It wasn’t just antibiotics, of course — it was also vaccines. Mine was the first generation to not have to worry about polio. But for antibiotics at least, those days may be coming to an end, and we may have to look at other (perhaps nanotechnological) solutions to killing bad bugs. Or return to the bad old days. This is a rare area, in fact, where I think that government spending should be increased.