Quote Originally Posted by RICHARD View Post
So, you cut and pasted your answer about pathogens?
Oh, how you must underestimate my intellect so! You cannot revise by cutting and pasting. Google my words, if you so desire, you will find that they are my own.

As for the next bit...

Psst, do they teach pharmacology in regular school.
A little. But, because I am just curious like that, I often do a little reading around the topics we're given simply to pass exams.


Drugs don't cause mutations?

Why do pathogens mutate and become resistant to the compounds in medicines?

Here's another question.

THINK about this one.

Drugs are ideal enviroments for mutated strains, but they are not the cause of mutated strains?



You say that you could have given me a 'Pathogens for dummies', and yet you don't know how this works?

No. I have read of one obscure protozoan responding directly to drug treatment, though.

Mutations arise as a fault in copying of the DNA the vast majority of the time.

An organism cannot think 'Hang on, these conditions are kind of killing me today, better mutate fast!' It dies. IF a mutation has arisen that gives the organism an advantage, it may well survive.Again, natural selection driving extinction and evolution.

You cannot stop it happening, but you can decrease the occurences by administering less medication.

If you don't believe my biology, that's cool. All I can say is that I managed to score in the top ten points in my AS level, and I was able to get on a course, specifically on this kind of stuff, of the top twenty or so young biochemists in the country - so somewhere along the lines, I must be doing something right!