The popular Brown Bag Green Book series sponsored by Knox County Public Library and the City of Knoxville will continue as Dr. Martha Buchanan, Director of Knox County Health Department, discusses the article "Superbugs" by Jerome Groopman on Wednesday, October 20, at 12 p.m. in the East Tennessee History Center Auditorium, 601 S. Gay Street.

According to Groopman's article, published in The New Yorker magazine on August 11, 2008, superbugs are those bacteria that have developed immunity to a number of antibiotics—methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA , is the most well-known. In the past, doctors prescribed antibiotics widely, "often for sore throats, sinus congestion, and coughs that were due not to bacteria but to viruses. In response, bacteria quickly developed resistance to the most common antibiotics." Antibiotics are now also commonly used in agricultural industries to prevent animals from becoming sick and to speed their growth, contributing to the resistance to the drugs.

Dr. Buchanan graduated from Carson Newman College and East Tennessee State University James H. Quillen College of Medicine. She completed her residence in Family Practice at the University of North Dakota Family Practice Program. She is board certified in family practice and is a member of the American Academy of Family Practice and the Tennessee Academy of Family Practice. She has been with Knox County Health Department since 2004

The public is invited to join the conversation. For help accessing the article before the program, please call the Library's Reference Desk at 215-8700.

The series will continue Wednesday, November 17 with Todd Witcher, Executive Director of Discover Life in America, leading a discussion of Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, From Nanobacteria to New Monkeys by Robb Dunn.

For more information, please call Emily Ellis at 215-8723.