IELTS Reading — Stage 3 (7): The Post-Antibiotic Shadow
Full passage, questions, and deep linguistic analysis in English.
READING PASSAGE
The Post-Antibiotic Shadow
A. When Alexander Fleming accepted the Nobel Prize for discovering penicillin in 1945, he used his acceptance speech not to celebrate but to warn. He described a scenario in which patients treated with insufficient doses of penicillin would fail to kill the bacteria in their bodies, and those surviving bacteria would pass on their resistance to future generations. "The time may come," he said grimly, "when penicillin cannot be bought for any money." That time, many public-health officials now believe, is closer than anyone in Fleming's audience cared to imagine.
B. Antibiotic resistance is not a single phenomenon but a moving target. Bacteria reproduce rapidly, and random mutations occasionally produce a strain that can survive exposure to a drug. Overuse and misuse of antibiotics — in hospitals, on farms, and in the home — have accelerated the selection of these resistant strains to the point where common infections are once again becoming untreatable. The World Health Organization now lists antibiotic resistance as one of the top ten global public-health threats. In the United States alone, more than two million people contract resistant infections each year, and tens of thousands die as a result.
C. The agricultural dimension is, if anything, more alarming than the medical one. Roughly seventy percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are used not in human medicine but in livestock. Farmers administer them to healthy animals to promote growth and compensate for crowded, unsanitary conditions. This routine, low-dose exposure is the perfect recipe for breeding resistant bacteria: it does not kill every organism, and the survivors are the hardiest. Those bacteria can then spread to farmworkers, to the food supply, and into the wider community.
D. The pharmaceutical response has been slow and largely ineffective. Developing a new antibiotic costs an estimated one and a half billion dollars, yet the drugs are prescribed sparingly by design — the more a new antibiotic is used, the faster resistance develops. This creates a paradox: the antibiotics society needs most are the least profitable to develop. Major pharmaceutical companies have shut down their antibiotic research programmes in favour of more lucrative chronic-disease drugs. The few candidates currently in the pipeline were developed by small biotechnology firms, often with public funding.
E. A new approach, advocated by a coalition of medical charities and economists, is to delink antibiotic sales from profits. Instead of paying companies per pill sold, governments would offer large fixed prizes for the development of new antibiotics, regardless of how many prescriptions are written. The idea is to reward innovation without incentivising overuse. Several countries, including the United Kingdom, have begun to test this model. Early results are encouraging, but the sums involved are substantial, and it remains unclear whether governments will commit the necessary funding over the long term.
F. The shadow of the post-antibiotic era is not distant horror fiction. It is already here in isolated pockets — patients dying from infections that would have been trivial a decade ago, surgeries postponed because the antibiotics to prevent infection are no longer reliable. Whether the broader future resembles these scattered cases depends less on new science than on old political will. The knowledge to slow resistance exists. The question is whether societies will use it before the cupboard is bare.
QUESTIONS
Questions 1–4: Choosing Headings
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B, C, D, and E.
| i. | Why antibiotics are used on farms |
| ii. | How antibiotic resistance spreads and why it threatens us |
| iii. | A new funding model to incentivise innovation |
| iv. | Fleming's original discovery |
| v. | The economic paradox of new antibiotic development |
| vi. | How resistant bacteria enter the food supply |
| vii. | The cost of a new drug in developing countries |
1. Paragraph B ____ 2. Paragraph C ____ 3. Paragraph D ____ 4. Paragraph E ____
Questions 5–9: YES / NO / NOT GIVEN
5. Fleming believed penicillin would always be available.
6. Resistant infections in the US cause tens of thousands of deaths annually.
7. Most antibiotics sold in the US are used on farms.
8. Large pharmaceutical companies continue to invest heavily in new antibiotics.
9. The delinking model has already eliminated antibiotic resistance worldwide.
Questions 10–13: Sentence Completion (NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS)
10. Low-dose antibiotic use on farms selects for the ________ bacteria.
11. New antibiotics are prescribed sparingly to prevent the development of ________.
12. The proposed model pays companies fixed prizes rather than ________ per pill sold.
13. Slowing resistance depends on political will more than new ________.
ANSWER KEY
| Q | Answer | Q | Answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ii | 8 | NO |
| 2 | i | 9 | NO |
| 3 | v | 10 | hardiest |
| 4 | iii | 11 | resistance |
| 5 | NO | 12 | profits |
| 6 | YES | 13 | science |
| 7 | YES |
DEEP LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
A. Sentence Architecture
Paragraph A, last sentence:
That time, many public-health officials now believe, is closer than anyone in Fleming's audience cared to imagine.
- Many public-health officials now believe is a parenthetical — it attributes the claim rather than stating it as fact. This is standard journalistic caution.
- Cared to imagine = wanted to imagine / was prepared to consider. The phrasing implies people chose not to think about it.
Paragraph D, key sentence:
This creates a paradox: the antibiotics society needs most are the least profitable to develop.
- Paradox = a contradiction. The colon introduces it directly.
- The...the... structure: the most needed, the least profitable — parallel comparison.
B. Vocabulary in Depth
moving target (B) = something that keeps changing, making it hard to fight. Resistance is not a fixed enemy.
delink (E) = separate two things that were connected. The model delinks sales from profits.
pipeline (D) = drugs currently in development. Candidates in the pipeline = drugs being tested.
the cupboard is bare (F) = there is nothing left. Metaphor from a pantry. The writer means no antibiotics will be effective.
C. Why the Tricky Answers Are Tricky
Q5: NO. Fleming warned that a time may come when penicillin cannot be bought. The question says he "believed it would always be available." Direct contradiction — he predicted the opposite.
Q8: NO. Paragraph D says major companies "have shut down their antibiotic research programmes." The question says they "continue to invest heavily." Contradiction.
Q9: NO. Paragraph E says early results are encouraging but it is unclear whether governments will fund it. The question claims it "has already eliminated resistance worldwide" — wildly overstated. NO.
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