The Future of Medicine

It's possible that the key to fighting antibiotic resistant bacteria in the future will be infecting the patient with a virus. Turns out the commies were doing something right, but it's also a matter of necessity is the mother of invention. According to the article linked earlier, bacteriophages were discovered not long before chemical antibiotics, but they lacked the broad ranges of antibiotics, and research in the area dried up in the West. In communist Russia, antibiotics were harder to come by and research continued on bacteriophages, and they are still in use in hospitals in some parts of Eastern Europe. Unlike most antibiotics, the viruses only attack one type of bacteria, which is both a benefit and a drawback. It's a benefit because it only kills the harmful bacteria causing infection. Have you ever noticed how a round of antibiotics mess up your digestive tract? It's because the drugs wiped out everythin microbial on its way through. Bacteriophages would leave the digestive bacteria behind while destroying the strep, for example. It's a drawback because the doctor actually has to know exactly what you're infected with before knowing what virus to give you.

This is actually a really big rediscovery which could help treat strains of bacteria that are currently untreatable. Resistant strains of bacteria are starting to become huge problems, mainly because of overuse of antibiotics. If your doctor prescribes antibiotics for a cold or any other viral infection, punch him or her in the throat with a quick and precise rabbit punch, or find a new doctor who hasn't been crushed into a souless, antibiotic dispensing pulp of his former self by the constant nagging of borderline retarded parents who think that their physician needs to prescribe some sort of pill for every sniffle their little precious makes. This isn't even new knowledge. My mom found this out from a doctor when I was a child twenty years ago. It just gets a little scary when you've got killer infections wandering the halls of the nation's hospitals that are entirely unphased by current antibiotic lines.