Category: Postwar Science

• The Antibiotic Overuse

  The Antibiotic Overuse theory was a late-1940s fear that penicillin and other early antibiotics, if used too freely, would generate resistant organisms powerful enough to outpace medicine and cause a global bacterial catastrophe by 1960. Unlike many moral panics, this fear drew directly from early scientific warnings, especially concerns that underdosing or misuse would select for hardier bacterial strains.