In little more than 30 years, antibiotic-resistance may be more deadly than cancer around the globe.
At least 23,000 people in the US die of an antibiotic-resistant infection each year - and some estimates suggest it's far more.
Superbugs - bacteria that have mutated to be untreateable with antibiotics - are rapidly spreading and becoming a serious threat to public health the world over.
Their growing numbers are fueled by over-prescription, waste from drug manufacturing plants, antibiotic use in animals and even international travel.
One researcher told CBS that his ongoing research suggests one in three international travelers returns home with at least one superbug.
By 2050, some projections suggest that drug resistance in general will claim the lives of 10 million people - more than the 8.2 million that die of cancer worldwide each year.
If we can rein in the practices fueling drug resistance, then death rates may never climb that high.
But doctors are seeing more resistant infections every day, forcing them to resort to more powerful drugs of last resort - or simply to lose patients.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria, like this strain of campylobacter, are spreading rapidly and could kill as many as 10 million people in 2050, some estimates suggest (file)
ANTIBIOTICS CURED SO MANY INFECTIONS THAT THEY STARTED CAUSING NEWER, STRONGER ONES
Antibiotic resistance is fast becoming an issue entangled with countless others.
Environmental waste and destruction helps fuel it, as do practices railed against by animal rights activists, industry lobbies and even the antivaxxer movement.
Penicillin, the first antibiotic, was introduced in 1928. Since, the drug and its successors have saved countless lives from bacterial infections that were once death sentences.
For a few decades, it seemed there was an antibiotic to treat just about every bacterial infections - and some, called broad-spectrum antibiotics, that treated many different infections.
As long as they are bacterial, that is. Antibiotics will have no impact on a virus, which, in most cases, has to just run its course.
But the symptoms of viral and bacterial infections are often difficult to distinguish from one another, and patients - especially the parents of pediatric patients - hate being told to go home empty-handed.
So doctors began to prescribe 'harmless' antibiotics to anyone with symptoms like a runny nose, a fever and a headache, which could be caused either by a mild bacterial infection or a viral one like the common cold.
But they didn't anticipate that bacteria could become immune to the drugs by virtue of coming into contact with them.
MAKING DRUGS, RAISING LIVESTOCK, DIRTY CONDITIONS, AND TRAVEL: THE THINGS HELPING BACTERIA 'LEARN' TO BE RESISTANT
Meanwhile, many drug manufacturers' poor waste and sewage disposal has allowed antibiotics to seep into the soil, making swamps and lakes perfect breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistance.
Plus, farmers have long given their animals antibiotics prophylactically, to keep them from getting sick.
Now, an estimated three-quarters of meat in US supermarkets are thought to carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to federal tests published last summer.
Other countries face even more uphill battles.
In the US, a doctor must at least determine - rightly or wrongly - that a patient
