Staphylococcus, a bacteria that colonizes the noses of one in five people, has proven over the years to be among the most adaptable bacteria. Targeted with penicillin in 1942, by 1948 staph was largely resistant. Erythromycin was introduced in 1952 and quickly lost its bite, leading to raging hospital infections. Now vancomycin is the magic bullet. As a class, though, they are certainly less individualistic than we are.
Bacteria are indifferent to how they get their genes.
Sworn to the Hippocratic oath, doctors will throw everything in their arsenal at bacteria to save one patient. In December 1996, epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention got a long-anticipated but still chilling report. A child in Japan had contracted a staph aureus infection that appeared to thumb its nose at vancomycin. The appearance of the bug in scattered hospitals suggests that, like a series of supercomputers seeking answers to a complicated equation, staphylococci around the world are on the verge of cracking the vancomycin code. There are all sorts of fairly nasty scenarios that you could dream up.