Explain why antibiotics are not effective against viruses.?

Question

please help

Answer 1

Antibiotics kill bacteria, not viruses. Bacteria and viruses are different. Their life cycles are different and their basic biology is different. Something designed to kill bacteria is exploiting something in the biology of the bacteria. A virus will probably not have the same weakness in it that the bacteria had. Therefore, the antibiotic cannot exploit that weakness and kill the virus.

Answer 2

Well there are 2 parts really....
1. is what antibiotics actually do
and 2. is about the virus

1. There are various antibiotics that are used to affect different parts of the bacterial cell eg some affect the cell wall,membrane others protein synthesis or other biochemical processes in the bacteria...basically to stop it working properly or cause cytoplasm to leak etc etc...

2. Viruses are not considered to even be alive! All they contain is a protein coat (so no cell wall or membrane to be affected) and some nuclear material (ag DNA or RNA) and inside the virus it doesn't even "work" like in other cells. A virus uses living cells to make more viruses, so its biochemical processes are actually done by its host cell...not the virus itself......

Combined I guess this helps...also the word anti biotic means against life....if you remember that viruses are not alive then this will also help.

Answer 3

Antibiotics only kill bacteria, viruses are completely different. Most doctors/scientists don't know what a virus is or where they come from. Some would argue that they are spent cells (dead cells) of our own body- Waste. If we don't correct the cause of the waste, these viruses proliferate.

B/c these spent cells are in our body; it poisons our system and causes us to feel sick. There is no medication against viruses and basically our bodies need to flush these things out by itself. There are "flue" medications that help treat these viruses, but only with the combination of rest and fluids. (Ask yourself why?) Important fact- viruses don't eat anything or eliminate, so thus they can not be considered alive-right? Look up the definition of something that lives. It must eat and eliminate to be considered alive. (Bacteria eat and eliminate- thus they are alive and we can kill it!)

My understanding of a virus is the accumulation of wasted cells poisoning our bodies. If you think of the diagnosis of a virus its fever, nausea, fatigue vomit etcetera. These are also the symptoms of a poisoned body. How do we treat both?
By resting, breathing deeply watching your diet and drinking lots of fluids. (This is called detoxifying.)

I know this concept might be new to most people, but look up the definition of something that is alive.
Chances are if a virus was a living organism, then modern medicine would have found a way to kill them. Since there are not “virus” medications, my reasoning is probably more plausible.

I hope this helps,

Answer 4

The lack of intelligent answers above makes me want to chime in.

Antibiotics work by selectively blocking a cellular process which is present in a bacterial cell, but not a eukaryotic (specifically human) cell. Many antibiotics work by targeting and blocking the production of bacterial cell walls (which we don't have) or bacterial protein synthesis (we have slightly different ribosomes, so the antibiotics are not effective against them).

In order to replicate inside infected human cells, a virus will use *our own* cellular machinery. Anything which stops our cells from functioning would block the virus, but it would also be toxic to our cells.

There are antiviral medications which block steps specific to some viruses (such as HIV or Herpes) by using a viral encoded process and not one which is normally found in human cells.

Answer 5

A virus takes over the cells of your body and infects them in order to multiply. In order to do this they must be VERY small. Bacteria are much larger and are affected by antibiotics, which identify the shape of the attackers and use that information to make an antibody to destroy it. This doesn't work with viruses as they are far too small to identify in that way.

Answer 6

Viruses and micro organism are diverse organisms and characteristic diverse structures. Antibiotics are designed to kill micro organism. operating example, many antibiotics paintings with the help of specifically targetting the bacterial cellular wall at the same time as viruses lack any cellular wall to commence with. in addition,antiviral drugs target certain structures on viruses that are not any more modern-day on micro organism and as a effect ineffective hostile to them. contained in the spirit of Halloween, imagine of it like this; you could't kill a vampire with a silver bullet and also you could't kill a werewolf with the help of throwing some holy water on it.

Answer 7

Antibiotics kill bacteria. Viruses are not bacteria. There are a lot of living organisms that antibiotics do not kill.

Answer 8

Antibiotics are chemical compounds which inhibit the growth of bacteria & fungi. Their composition is "anti-bacterial" not "anti-viral".

Answer 9

antibiotics kill bacteria and not viruses.

Answer 10

The same reason antibiotics don't kill Muslim terrorists. Muslim terrorists are not bacteria...well no literally.