Using phages to treat drug resistant bacteria
Using phages to treat drug resistant bacteria
Idea Description
Phages are naturally occurring predators of bacteria that don’t harm humans and are found anywhere bacteria exist. During the Cold War, Soviet doctors used phages effectively to treat patients afflicted with drug resistant strains of bacteria. The right strain of phage is not hard to find as Soviet doctors even just took water downstream from hospitals and were able to treat patients with drug resistant bacteria by breeding the appropriate strain. This is a natural process that would end the game of cat and mouse we are playing with peoples’ lives by constantly developing new antibiotics.
What will you do if you win $10,000 for this idea?
If I was awarded the 10,000 I would immediately try to interest local doctors to sign a petition and help me create and publicize a lobby group dedicated to putting political pressure on the governments of North America to introduce phage programs for their hospitals. This is a natural cure that requires little investment besides the time of doctors that are struggling too hard with drug resistant bacteria while the solution to the problem is all around us. All that would be required would be for individual hospitals to set up local phage progrmas which were done successfully in the Soviet Union.
Vote for it now.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I though phages were proven to be fictitious. I would love to see some information that proves me wrong. Feel free to post on one of my ideas
There are a lot of naysayers out there about phages. Phages are real. A simple Google search will find you results like the ones I paste below. The only reasons phages aren't in use now is that they are not patentable so pharmaceutical companies won't make money from them, they need to be developed on a regional/local basis as bacteria strains vary geographically, and the academic discipline of medicine in the US and Canada is very conservative when it comes to new ideas like this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy#Obstacles http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030712/bob9.asp http://www.phages.org/ http://www.phageinternational.com/