Why don't antibiotics kill viruses?

• A. They are not living
• B. They lack a bacterial cell wall
• C. They reproduce faster than antibiotics can act
• D. They mutate too quickly

Answer: (A)

Antibiotics work by disrupting features that bacteria rely on for life, such as their cell walls or specific bacterial enzymes. Viruses, however, aren’t living organisms in the sense that they can carry out metabolism or reproduce on their own; they need a host cell to replicate. Because viruses don’t have the cellular structures or independent metabolic processes that antibiotics target, these drugs have nothing to attack in a virus—and targeting host cells to affect a virus would risk harming the host. That’s why antibiotics don’t kill viruses.