Question

Some antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections kill the bacteria by chemically punching holes in the cell wall of the bacteria, by preventing the bacteria from replicating their DNA, or by many other actions that ultimately cause cell death. Why do these antibiotics not work to kill viruses and cure people of viral infections?

a. Antibiotics cannot kill a virus because viruses are not living cells with cell walls to puncture, nor do they have their own organelles to replicate DNA.
b. Viruses are just too virulent to be killed by those antibiotics.
c. Viruses are too quick for the antibiotics to work.
d. Viruses mutate at a rate faster than the rate at which antibiotics can work to kill them.

Answer 1

Antibiotics target bacterial cells' components and processes and thus, do not affect viruses, which lack such structures and must replicate inside host cells.

Step-by-step explanation:

Antibiotics are specifically designed to combat bacterial infections by targeting essential structures in bacterial cells, such as the cell wall, and by interfering with bacterial processes like DNA replication.

Viruses, on the other hand, lack cell walls and do not harbor the cellular machinery required for DNA replication, as they must utilize a host cell's organelles to reproduce.

Thus, antibiotics are ineffective against viruses because they do not possess the targets that antibiotics are designed to attack. Furthermore, since viruses are nonliving entities, they cannot be ‘killed’ in the traditional sense that antibiotics might kill bacteria.

To tackle viral infections, antiviral drugs are used which are designed to interfere with viral replication by targeting viral proteins.

Options for treating bacterial infections include the use of bacteriophages, which are viruses that specifically infect bacteria, providing an alternative to traditional antibiotics, especially in cases of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains.

Antiviral drugs are used to address viral infections by targeting viral-specific proteins.