Penicillin

Necrotizing fasciitis is a rare but potentially deadly disease that ravages the body's tissues and causes them to die off, earning it the fiendish nickname "flesh-eating bacteria. " A Georgia college student, Aimee Copeland, 24, is currently fighting the disease from her hospital bed near Atlanta. She contracted necrotizing fasciitis after falling from a homemade zip line ride during what was supposed to be a day of fun in the sun on May 1. The fall left a gash in her left calf, believed to have been the entry point for the necrotizing fasciitis.

Los Angeles County health officials blame an outbreak of penicillin-resistant gonorrhea on an increase in unsafe sexual practices, prostitution and drug abuse. Through October, the county had 1,193 reported cases of penicillin-resistant gonorrhea, 57 fewer cases than at the same time last year but more than half of them showing up from July through September. In October alone, the county reported 271 cases. This clustering of cases signals a sudden outbreak, health official said.

An outbreak of strep throat resistant to a common antibiotic could be considered a wake-up call that some drugs may fail when they're needed. In monitoring 100 children at a Pittsburgh school last year, Dr. Judith M. Martin found 46 children with strains resistant to erythromycin, one of the most frequently used drugs for strep. Although some children never became ill, others had to be treated with different antibiotics.

When James Watson and Francis Crick deciphered the structure of DNA in 1953, their discovery answered a crucial question in biology: How is genetic information passed down from parent to child? Their work also created conundrums, however. They and others showed that every cell of an organism contains all of its genetic material. How, then, does an individual cell know which genes to use and when? And how does information from DNA get to the cell's protein-making machinery? The seminal insight into those questions came from three biologists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris - Dr. Francois Jacob, Jacques Monod and Andre Lwoff.

About 70 medical vials that have washed ashore on San Diego County beaches in the past two days may contain penicillin, health officials said Monday. "The white or yellowish-white powder looked outdated," said Gary Stephany, environmental health director for the county Department of Health Services. "It looked like the type of medicine someone just tossed in the ocean, although I hope no one tossed it there. It appears to be the same substance that washed up on beaches two years ago.

Andrew Phillip Cunanan was nursing a stomach wound before his suicide and investigators believe he may have been wounded in one of the five murders he's suspected of committing. Police found bloody bandages, cotton swabs, gauze pads and penicillin pills in the Miami Beach houseboat where Cunanan ended his life with a gunshot to the head July 23. Cunanan, 27, was the prime suspect in the point-blank slaying of fashion designer Gianni Versace July 15 in Miami Beach, along with four other

Teen-agers are having more sex despite government warnings of the danger of getting the deadly AIDS virus, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said today. "We do know that teen-agers are not listening," Koop said on ABC's "Good Morning America." He said that infectious syphilis and penicillin-resistant gonorrhea spread faster in 1987 than at any other time in 16 years and that 3 of every 1,000 college students tested positive for AIDS, according to a study this year.