The Blog of Harald

Wired 11.10: How Ravenous Soviet Viruses Will Save the World

In a nutshell:

Bacteria are becoming antibiotic resistant. Casual antibiotic use in people and animals has created several “superstrains” that are killing people (mainly in hospital surgical wards, but still).

Antibiotics are expensive and take a decade or more to develop, and bacteria are adapting faster all the time. Meanwhile, nature already has a perfectly good solution: for every bacteria out there, there exists a bacteriophage that eats it. Phages evolve with their bacterial counterparts; no complex scientific escalation required. Phages can be harvested from nature (by dropping a bucket into the Chesapeake Bay :-).

An interesting part of the article is how capitalism is getting it the way…