exciting science
Bacteriophages can be used kill bacterial infections including those that are antibiotic resistant.
Whoah.
-http://www.genengnews.com/biobusiness/cpitem.aspx?aid=2616&chid=0
-there are also articles in Nature and some popular science mags.
We watched a video about how Institute of Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology in Tblisi,Georgia has been researching and using bacteriophages to kill antibiotic resistant bacteria since the ~1920/30s. Apparently people in Georgia can chose to have their bacterial infections analyzed and be treated with a corresponding bacteriophage (a virus that infects and can kill bacteria) that is specific for whatever bacteria strain they have. And it works!
Hospitals in Georgia also send them antibiotic strains that are killing people to see if they have a bacteriophage in stock or can find one. One of the places they get new bacteriophage from is the institutes's sewer water where there's a lot of bacteria and bacteriophages mixing together.
The rest of the world is only just starting to open up to the idea. In the movie it said that one of the reasons scientists elsewhere didn't know about this use/didn't believe it was bc "if scientific articles aren't published in english they aren't considered to be valid"!
(Taken from the perspective of the "Western world" of course) One man was even saying that he didn't think there were any scientists in the U.S. who could read Russian or some blather!
Unbelievable. I think that really has to change -wider access, subscriptions and translations of journals in different languages. I'm not even sure how true it is that no one was willing to read those articles. I can think of one research place where they looked at artcles that weren't published in English and different people translated. Seriously sounds like anti-communism was also at work here...
In an case maybe there will be clinics in Canada and elsewhere where Abr bacteria are treated this way one day. I'd actually be interested in working/researching at a bacteriophage clinic... that would be sweet.
Whoah.
-http://www.genengnews.com/biobusiness/cpitem.aspx?aid=2616&chid=0
-there are also articles in Nature and some popular science mags.
We watched a video about how Institute of Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology in Tblisi,Georgia has been researching and using bacteriophages to kill antibiotic resistant bacteria since the ~1920/30s. Apparently people in Georgia can chose to have their bacterial infections analyzed and be treated with a corresponding bacteriophage (a virus that infects and can kill bacteria) that is specific for whatever bacteria strain they have. And it works!
Hospitals in Georgia also send them antibiotic strains that are killing people to see if they have a bacteriophage in stock or can find one. One of the places they get new bacteriophage from is the institutes's sewer water where there's a lot of bacteria and bacteriophages mixing together.
The rest of the world is only just starting to open up to the idea. In the movie it said that one of the reasons scientists elsewhere didn't know about this use/didn't believe it was bc "if scientific articles aren't published in english they aren't considered to be valid"!
(Taken from the perspective of the "Western world" of course) One man was even saying that he didn't think there were any scientists in the U.S. who could read Russian or some blather!
Unbelievable. I think that really has to change -wider access, subscriptions and translations of journals in different languages. I'm not even sure how true it is that no one was willing to read those articles. I can think of one research place where they looked at artcles that weren't published in English and different people translated. Seriously sounds like anti-communism was also at work here...
In an case maybe there will be clinics in Canada and elsewhere where Abr bacteria are treated this way one day. I'd actually be interested in working/researching at a bacteriophage clinic... that would be sweet.