Explain why anti biotics are not effective against viruses.?

Question

Can anyone explain???

Answer 1

Not all antibiotics are effective against all bacteria, either.
antibiotics are directed at specific parts of the bacterial organism. For example, an antibiotic might be a chemical designed to prevent the bacteria from building up their cell wall structures. If they can't build up their cell walls, they can't grow and reproduce. Soon, they are all dead or devoured by the body's immune system.

Viruses are not bacteria. They are simply genetic material (DNA or RNA) inside of a "coat". They attach to a cell, inject the DNA, and use the cell's machinery to reproduce themselves. The fact that they reproduce inside of human cells makes it very, very hard to kill them. Cuz to stop them from reproducing, well, you would have to kill...yourself! That is bad. So the only drugs that help kill viruses are drugs that stop certain cellular enzymes like reverse transcriptase....these drugs help stop the virus from making lots of copies of the DNA....but doesn't kill the virus, only slows it down.

The only way to stop a virus is really a vaccination. Make your body recognise it as "foreign" and then the body will kill it using special immune cells. OF course now a bunch of nut cases think vaccines are dangerous. These individuals are stupid.

Answer 2

Viruses and Bacteria are different organisms and have different structures. Antibiotics are designed to kill bacteria. For example, many antibiotics work by specifically targetting the bacterial cell wall while viruses lack any cell wall to begin with. Similarly,antiviral medications target certain structures on viruses that are not present on bacteria and thus ineffective against them.

In the spirit of Halloween, think of it like this; you can't kill a vampire with a silver bullet and you can't kill a werewolf by throwing some holy water on it.

Answer 3

Bacteria and viruses are two different things. Viruses live and reproduce much differently than bacteria. Antibiotics are effective only against bacteria. Anti virals are medicines with activity agains viruses and are much harder to develope/

Answer 4

When a person is acting on their Christian beliefs, they are making statements based on what the Bible recommends. The old testament has some anti-gay verbiage. Abortion relates to Murder of the innocent (which is against an old testament commandment). Praying in schools has to do with practice of the religion itself. Global Warming, Antibiotics resistant germs, Viruses - not mentioned in the Bible. However, some things (AIDS for example) relate to sexual practices, so Christians will comment on that as well.

Answer 5

Antibiotics (biotic meaning bacteria) are natural or synthesized chemicals
which inhibit or block metabolism of critical biologica functions of
bacteria. Bacteria are free-living organisms who must use metabolic
processes to acquire nutrients, digest them and synthesize membranes,
organelles, cell wall and capsule. Some or all of these components may be
present in all bacteria including pathogenic ones. A lot of antibiotics
affect cell wall or capsule synthesis and others effect synthesis of
proteins or enzymes the bacteria need to live.

Viruses, on the other hand, cannot continue living outside of the
eukaryotic (animal, or plant) cells which they infect. Viruses must use
the metabolic machinery of the host eukaryotic cell to replicate itself.
Therefore, using a typical antibiotic rationale attempts to interfere with
viral replication metabolism like described above for bacteria would make
the host cells sick without necessarily harming the viruses. Since viruses
are protein enveloped bits of DNA or RNA, most "antiviral" drugs are
directed to metabolism of DNA or RNA but to be effective and safe these
drugs must be targetted to DNA or RNA actions that are not normally used
by the eukaryotic host cells. This is an extremely difficult task and many
antiviral drugs make normal host cells pretty sick and there is an
increased risk of serious (DNA/RNA) mutations, possibly leading to
neoplasia that can result if antiviral drugs are used too much too long.

Answer 6

Viruses and bacteria are two different pathological agents, antibiotics are designed to kill bacteria and are not effective against viruses. The body's natural defenses kill bacteria with the exception of ones like HIV.

Answer 7

We're witnessing Evolution in action. When antibiotics were first introduced they were very effective, killing off 99.9999...% of a population of virus in your body. But, just as some humans are naturally immune to viruses, some of the virus were immune to the antibiotic. After a while these "immune" viruses were the only ones left and they have multiplied until we have the problems we have, now. This is Evolution brought about very quickly by man-made environmental pressures on the viruses. Survival of the fittest viruses.
.

Answer 8

They don't work. Antibiotics are used against bacteria. Antivirals are used against viruses.

Answer 9

The way I understand it and have taught the answer to that questions is because viruses are not living things. They have genetic material but they have to inject that genetic material into a living thing (host cell) to be able to reproduce. Basically, the way I look at it is you can't kill something that isn't considered living. I'm sure there is much more to it than that though.

Answer 10

I think it's because a virus is always changing, and it would be pointless to take a medicine if it won't work!