ISLAND PRESS, JUNE 2017For all the fear and harm we associate with viruses, many (if not most) are phages, infecting bacteria, like those in our microbiome. Genomics is just beginning to reveal the diversity and representations of these entities in nature and within our bodies. But the role that phages can serve as potent antimicrobials is no mystery. As infectious agents of bacteria, they are a normal and pervasive component of Earth’s flora, and they have already saved many lives. One day they just might save us or our loved ones. That was the case for Gary Schoolnik, Stanford Professor of Infectious Disease, who tells the story of his mother, dying from typhoid fever in 1948. His father, a surgeon, had read about some doctors using bacteriophage to cure typhoid. Desperate for a cure, Schoolnik’s father contacted the group, acquired the phage, and injected his wife. Within two days her fever disappeared.
But this was a time when antibiotics were becoming the symbol of modern medical success. Typhoid was one of the last holdouts against antibiotics. When an effective one was finally discovered, no one wanted to continue using phages. Plus, the therapy suffered from conflicting reports about efficacy, poorly controlled clinical studies, and a lack of quality control by companies producing phage. The science of healing with viruses, writes Anna Kuchment, in her aptly titled book The Forgotten Cure, “had been all but forgotten in the west.” Now, western scientists and physicians are trying to bring the therapy back to the American pharmacopeia; but doing so means navigating what has—for good reason—become a rigorous and expensive drug approval process under the FDA. But it is also ...
