This article was amended on September 18, 2015.
The growing resistance of life-threatening diseases to antibiotics will plunge Britain into an “apocalypse” of social and economic crises without new treatments, experts have warned.
Ministers are pouring tens of millions of pounds into probiotics and other first lines of defence against drug-resistant infections as a leading scientist claimed that first-world countries could find themselves in the grip of riots and even civil war if basic medical care becomes impossible to carry out safely.
After David Cameron’s warning that antibiotic resistance could send the UK back into the “dark ages of medicine”, an academic has set out a bleak picture of a world in which people live in a perpetual state of fear.
Adam Roberts, senior lecturer