question_answer

A hospital technician, while doing some routine culturing of micro-organisms in a lab, noticed a bacterial colony growing on a culture medium containing three different antibiotics. He identified the bacterium as one that did not cause a human disease, but he still reported his observation to the hospital administration. Why is he so worried?

A)  He had no way of killing this bacterium now that it was resistant to antibiotics.

B)  Resistance to antibiotics could be transferred to disease-causing bacteria by transduction or conjugation.

C)  The bacterium might feed on the antibiotics and therefore be able to grow in people taking these antibiotics.

D)  If people accidentally ingested the bacteria with their food, they would become resistant to the antibiotic.