TY - JOUR T1 - Editor’s Briefing JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 339 LP - 339 DO - 10.3399/bjgp13X668438 VL - 63 IS - 612 AU - Roger Jones Y1 - 2013/07/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/63/612/339.abstract N2 - I have borrowed part of the title of Roy Porter’s The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: a Medical History of Humanity to attempt to capture the impact of antibiotics on human health. However, when Ernst Chain, Howard Florey, and Alexander Fleming went to Stockholm in 1945 to collect their Nobel prize for physiology, Florey was already concerned about the long-term future of antibiotic usage, and commented ‘There is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and, by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug, make them resistant’. Antibiotic resistance is now recognised as a major medical problem, which has concerned a series of chief medical officers over the last 15 years. The present CMO, Professor Dame Sally Davies, has warned that if action is not taken … ER -