Srinivasan, who is also featured in a Frontline report called ‘Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria,’ which aired Tuesday, said that both humans and livestock have been overmedicated to such a degree that bacteria are now resistant to antibiotics.

‘We’re in the post-antibiotic era,’ he said. ‘There are patients for whom we have no therapy, and we are literally in a position of having a patient in a bed who has an infection, something that five years ago even we could have treated, but now we can’t.’…

With bacteria constantly evolving and developing resistance to conventional antibiotics, doctors have been forced to ‘reach back into the archives’ and ‘dust off’ older, more dangerous cures like colistin.

‘It’s very toxic,’ said Srinivasan. ‘We don’t like to use it. It damages the kidneys. But we’re forced to use it in a lot of instances.’