Hopefully you will find this as interesting as I did. Several years ago, I read a news article about a woman whose husband contracted a bacterial infection that was antibiotic resistant. In the article, he was near death, like, VERY near. He had been sick for months, barely alive, and doctors had no more treatments, The wife was an infectious disease epidemiologist, a researcher, not a doctor. She had one idea left.
Their story has come out in book form, called The Perfect Predator. As we travel a great deal by car, we listen to a lot of books, and that was the last one we listened to. I was fairly riveted by the story, though mostly by the actual science of it, less the more personal stuff. Still, it was an amazing story. You can read an actual news article about them HERE. You can read a bit more about the book HERE. Basically, there has been a lack of new classes of antibiotics in 60 years, and the existing ones are becoming less useful as bacteria adapts and becomes resistant to them. As such, our health care system faces some dire problems in the future, in a way, regressing our ability to fight infections to pre world war 2, and penicillin days. A hundred years ago though, there was a science going on trying to fight infections with viruses. It seems weird to think, but some viruses live to ‘eat’ some bacteria. And that science has continued throughout the century, though with the advent of antibiotics, it has been studied far less in western medicine. Particularly, it has been continued to be studied in the former Soviet Union, and specifically, in Russia, Georgia, and Poland. These viruses, called Phages by the author of the book, are collected from all kinds of places, as viruses thrive in all kinds of places, particularly waste. Okay, so all this preface to a story and book that I enjoyed is really to get to this, AI was used reccently to invent a new class of antibiotics. Read about it HERE. New Class of Antibiotics Discovered Using AI | Scientific American It is a fascinating article, not only about the use of AI, but using the AI to also EXPLAIN how the AI came to its conclusion. Instead of using the AI to solve a problem, the scientist asked the AI to show how it came up with the solution, thereby teaching the scientists its method, and also proving its theory. While antibiotics appear to have a lifespan of usefulness, being able to invent new ones will be critical to the health of humans. Having something else in the arsenal of fighting infections, whether it’s a new antibiotic, or a new format completely, as in phages, will be critical to the continued survival of our world as we know it. That sounds overdramatic, but I don’t think it is. Fighting infections has arguably been the single most important medical advancement in human history. Surgery, dentistry, cuts and abrasions, food borne illness, eating, drinking, human interaction, they are all able to spread infections. Fighting off those infections is a human requirement.
2 Comments
Walter J Declerck
1/19/2024 10:13:56 am
Great story Brian, and congrats to the Abiquiu News for stretching its wings.
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j. suris
1/20/2024 09:39:47 am
thanks Brian! enjoyed this!!
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