Question

What effect do antibiotics have on normal body cells? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

It greatly depends on the type of antibiotics you are using. There are many classes of antibiotics and some are more or less toxic than others. All substances however are toxic to the body as a whole to some degree but to individual cells it depends on the antibiotic.
MOST of them however have very little toxicity when taken at proper dosages for proper periods of time.
Antibiotics that can cross the blood brain barrier, and those that are intercellular have a greater chance to cause harm to our cells than those that take effect merely on the outside of our cells.
Basically, the best answer to this question would be "virtually none" as they target bacterial membranes or replication mechanisms which do not share similarities with our own cells.

Answer 2

^~I don't know how true that is~^
Antibiotics goal is to target bacteria and prevent them from spread and even kill those already in the body. The problem is that while there are a bunch of different kinds of bacteria they all follow the same basic life cycle. That being said, our body is filled with bacteria and most of it is good. That is why when antibiotics are taken it is common to experience diarrhea or stomach upset for the first few days (especially common in children). The gut fauna is being killed off partially by the antibiotic. It is also quite common for a female to get a yeast infection following a round of antibiotics. This is because the good bacteria found in her reproductive system are damaged. Doesn't sound like a bad thing on the outside, but that bacteria is responsible for keeping yeast growth under control and without that good bacteria a yeast infection can occur.

Answer 3

MathBlonde is completely correct, but the question was about the effect on cells, not the body as a whole.
As for the toxicity of antibiotics, for an antibiotic to be considered a "good" antibiotic it needs to adhere to the principle of differential toxicity, this means that it needs to be more toxic to the bacterial cells (much more) than the human cells. EVERYTHING that you put into your body has the potential to be toxic. Chemicals especially as they are foreign substances that can bind to, and "screw up" cells, we normally take these chemicals in the hope that they will hurt what we want them to and not what we don't want them to.

The great thing about treating bacterial infections is that bacteria are SO different from us that it is easy to treat them as since they have virtually no homology they can be targeted fairly easily.
A second, less important point on antibiotic toxicity would be people who are sensitive to them, there are many people who are allergic to specific antibiotics, that is why when you go to the doctor's office they ask you if you have any known allergies to drugs, normally there is at least one antibiotic in the list. Our bodies don't realize that the antibiotics are there to help and occasionally attack them out of protection for our body, this leads to an allergy developing.

So again, in summation, antibiotics kill bacterial cells and if they are good (if you are taking them they probably are) they wont effect your cells to any degree that you will notice.