Turning Terror into a Scientific Memoir
Interview with Steffanie Strathdee, author of The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug
Bill Sullivan
In 1915, microbiologist Frederick Twort occasionally noticed clear areas disrupting the growth of bacteria on his culture dishes. Twort found that the fluid in these clear areas contained a powerful substance that could kill bacteria. Following up on these observations at his laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1917, microbiologist Félix d’Herelle theorized these agents might be viruses and called them “bacteriophages.” He proposed that these phages could be used therapeutically to save millions of people from deadly infections.
Published May 13, 2021 at 10:01 AM PDT
sbtlneet/Pixabay
/
We ve all gotten a crash course in the pandemic about viruses and how they can kill us, and how they can be defeated by vaccines.
It turns out viruses can also help us in certain situations. for example, in defeating bacteria that antibiotics have no effect against.
It s combat at a microscope level, a story told by epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee in
Why frequent use of hand sanitizer could make us sick down the road theglobeandmail.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theglobeandmail.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Scientists Are Looking Beyond Antibiotics to Stop the Drug-Resistant Bacteria Crisis
Thor Benson
Save
Surgeons in France operate on a patient to inject him with phages as a treatment against multi-drug-resistant bacteria.
Photo: ROMAIN LAFABREGUE/AFP (Getty Images)
As the world continues to work toward defeating a pandemic caused by a virus, another type of pathogen is increasingly becoming a major threat. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria has been a growing problem for years due to the overuse of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture, as well as “poor infection prevention and control,” according to the World Health Organization. Researchers say if we don’t develop new ways to kill this kind of bacteria, we could soon lose countless lives every year as our antibiotics fail to treat common infections that can become deadly.