UPDATE: Antibiotic Resistance Crisis Following our report on the historical origins of antibiotic resistance since Fleming's 1928 discovery of penicillin, new CDC data released today shows resistant infections now cause an estimated 2.8 million illnesses annually in the U.S.—a 15% increase from 2019 figures. This acceleration underscores how the overuse patterns we documented have compounded over decades, making Fleming's initial breakthrough increasingly precarious as a medical tool. Experts attribute the spike to both clinical overprescription and agricultural antimicrobial use, factors integral to understanding how we reached this critical inflection point.