Clearly, everyone needs to stop washing their hands, or bacteria will develop soap immunity. And then what will we do?
E.g. it does not help if a bacteria can survive a soap if it is still physically flushed away.
We also have a massive escalation ladder for external detergents beyond basic soaps that include a near infinite number of substances of increasing brutality than our arsenal of antibiotics. Essentially anything that will not harm us much with relatively limited exposure, yet will physically disrupt small organism. We can wash our hands in bleach. Or various acids. Or any of numerous agents that are massively disruptive on biological organisms through basic chemistry or even by being physically abrasive.
We don't even particularly need to care if we kill off a fairly substantial number of our own skin cells in the process.
If we had the same arsenal available for fighting bacteria internally as what we can safely apply externally, we'd be in a fantastic position.
(http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/7/2/70-0225_article.htm)
> Skin hygiene, particularly of the hands, is a primary mechanism for reducing contact and fecal-oral transmission of infectious agents. Widespread use of antimicrobial products has prompted concern about emergence of resistance to antiseptics and damage to the skin barrier associated with frequent washing. This article reviews evidence for the relationship between skin hygiene and infection, the effects of washing on skin integrity, and recommendations for skin care practices.
But the gap from a bacteria to something that can withstand the physical barrage of a thorough wash is huge in comparison to the relatively tiny changes to overcome some antibiotics. E.g. an antibiotic might disrupt a single process of the bacteria that is beneficial (for them) but that have a multitude of similar alternatives that are different enough for the antibiotic to fail. Compare that to even just being able to strongly enough attach to the skin to not be flushed away by sheer force from a wash.
There are many reasons that tends to be given for being careful about stronger measures: 1) it is not necessary. It's a matter of being cautious - by using the least effective means that is effective enough, we exert the minimum pressure necessary, leaving us with a larger arsenal of (to us) gentle alternatives to step up to. 2) the stronger methods, the more we kill off beneficial or neutral bacteria too, and by doing so we may make conditions better for bacteria that are nasty for us if we happen to pick them up. 3) we reduce our immune systems exposure to relatively harmless amounts of bacteria and some believe this may be sufficient to actually reduce our overall immune defence.
As DanBC pointed out in response to one of my other comments, there's also the issue of physical damage. While we can bring the heavy artillery and effectively kill anything that lives on our skin, we can as collateral damage cause damage to our skin that creates additional places to hide - effectively a worse variation of washing away good/neutral baceteria - not only may we be removing the competition, but we may be opening cracks and folds that'll be excellent hiding places.
The thing with anti-bacterial soaps is not that the use of the soap is bad. The problem is the anti-bacterial part. It puts amounts of a broad spectrum antibiotic into the environment (be it your hands, your countertop, or the water system) in concentrations that aren't enough to do much, but are enough to put a little bit of selective pressure on the organisms and promote resistance.
It's also not particularly effective - soap and water, through a combination of both mechanical action and how soap disrupts cell membranes, works swimmingly. So there's a cost, and no benefit.
The answer to 'why isn't there a resistance to soap' is that soap, as a chemical, is absurd overkill. It's hellish on lipids of all sorts (tough on grease...and lipid cell membranes), and there's nothing to evolve a resistance to. Not expressing a particular protein, or expressing an enzyme that does a number on an antibiotic compound is effective - to evolve a resistance to soap, you'd somehow have to develop an entirely new type of compound to build cell membranes out of.
And while evolution is rather magnificent, that's asking a little much.
I dated a heatlh care professional for a while who was pretty adament that it was causing detrimental effects in the same manner as antibacterial soap.
So I don't know if I'd want it gone from toothpaste, but I'd like to see it gone from the many products where its useless or nearly useless, but included so someone can put 'Antibacterial' on the label.
Like soap. Soap is already antibacterial.
Thinking about this more, I suspect there already has been some selection in this direction, but that it has little to no public health impact, as this defense is not useful in places where infections are typically a problem. Indeed, our body is teeming with bacteria (mainly in the guy) that are in fact beneficial, and they've presumably managed some resistance to shear stress and extreme chemical environments (e.g. high acid).