16 hrs ·
Phages
I have always said one should educate themselves by first reading Prevention magazine every week, front to back.
I stopped that awhile back, but picked up a copy at the library last week. So here's a word that I hope you never need to know. It's a little Virus that can eat bacteria. Like MRSA, and some other bad stuff. Do research Phages. They are commonly used in Europe, and not developed here because, are you ready?
THEY CAN'T BE PATENTED!
Now as our antibiotics are running into trouble, its important, in my world, to learn all about these, as they CAN be obtained in this country, thru Soviet Georgia, via an American lab company. I hope we never need to use Phages for an illness, but who knows. You might want to see the Feb. issue of Prevention and keep it as a reference. Here is a bit I found online.
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Unusable solution
The American bias against phage is rooted in medical history, scientific preferences, Cold War distrust and some intellectual pride. Another factor is the American propensity to develop medications based on the profit motive unless the government provides funding to stem an epidemic. So far, scientists say phage treatments won't bring an adequate return on investment.
For 70 years, America has focused on antibiotics -- highly successful treatments that are the drug equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Antibiotics kill large numbers of different types of bacteria, whether they're good, bad or neutral to human health. The Soviets focused on phage, which is a sniper bullet that kills one specific bacterial infection. Different phages are needed for different bacterial infections.
The United States and Soviet Union developed their respective treatments in parallel fashion with little interaction.
Felix d'Herelle discovered the bacteriophage in 1917 and later worked at the Georgian institute founded by Joseph Stalin, who eventually would execute its founding director George Eliava. Phage was heralded in Soviet nations for its success, and d'Herelle was nominated eight times for the Nobel Prize without ever winning it. The plot of Sinclair Lewis' 1925 novel, "Arrowsmith," includes competition between phage scientists, referring to d'Herelle's work.
During World War II, the Eliava Institute pumped out phage treatments for the Soviet Red Army. The United States, meanwhile, used penicillin first formulated in 1928 but not fully developed as a treatment until the early 1940s. The United States produced 2.3 million doses of penicillin drugs for the Normandy invasion.
Eastern Europeans express amazement upon discovering that Americans are dying from infections routinely treated in their homeland with phage. The United States usually has treatments for diseases that kill thousands elsewhere. But Americans also have been reluctant to embrace a treatment that's been described as "Stalin's forgotten cure."
But the emergence of deadly antibiotic-resistant infections has raised the specter of returning to the pre-penicillin eras when few if any treatments existed against infections.
"If we had taken the long distant view in what we are doing clinically over a long period time, we should have tried to broaden our arsenal in dealing with bacterial infections, and it should have included bacterial-based infections," said Graham Hatfull, a biotechnology professor who works with phage and is co-director of Pitt's Bacteriophage Institute. Last year his team published a study about a phage treatment for acne. "Now with bacterial pathogens on an inevitable march toward resistance, we are wishing we had started earlier on phage therapy."
I copied this from my facebook page so I guess the stuff below "stays"!
I have always said one should educate themselves by first reading Prevention magazine every week, front to back.
I stopped that awhile back, but picked up a copy at the library last week. So here's a word that I hope you never need to know. It's a little Virus that can eat bacteria. Like MRSA, and some other bad stuff. Do research Phages. They are commonly used in Europe, and not developed here because, are you ready?
THEY CAN'T BE PATENTED!
Now as our antibiotics are running into trouble, its important, in my world, to learn all about these, as they CAN be obtained in this country, thru Soviet Georgia, via an American lab company. I hope we never need to use Phages for an illness, but who knows. You might want to see the Feb. issue of Prevention and keep it as a reference. Here is a bit I found online.
********************************************************************************
Unusable solution
The American bias against phage is rooted in medical history, scientific preferences, Cold War distrust and some intellectual pride. Another factor is the American propensity to develop medications based on the profit motive unless the government provides funding to stem an epidemic. So far, scientists say phage treatments won't bring an adequate return on investment.
For 70 years, America has focused on antibiotics -- highly successful treatments that are the drug equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Antibiotics kill large numbers of different types of bacteria, whether they're good, bad or neutral to human health. The Soviets focused on phage, which is a sniper bullet that kills one specific bacterial infection. Different phages are needed for different bacterial infections.
The United States and Soviet Union developed their respective treatments in parallel fashion with little interaction.
Felix d'Herelle discovered the bacteriophage in 1917 and later worked at the Georgian institute founded by Joseph Stalin, who eventually would execute its founding director George Eliava. Phage was heralded in Soviet nations for its success, and d'Herelle was nominated eight times for the Nobel Prize without ever winning it. The plot of Sinclair Lewis' 1925 novel, "Arrowsmith," includes competition between phage scientists, referring to d'Herelle's work.
During World War II, the Eliava Institute pumped out phage treatments for the Soviet Red Army. The United States, meanwhile, used penicillin first formulated in 1928 but not fully developed as a treatment until the early 1940s. The United States produced 2.3 million doses of penicillin drugs for the Normandy invasion.
Eastern Europeans express amazement upon discovering that Americans are dying from infections routinely treated in their homeland with phage. The United States usually has treatments for diseases that kill thousands elsewhere. But Americans also have been reluctant to embrace a treatment that's been described as "Stalin's forgotten cure."
But the emergence of deadly antibiotic-resistant infections has raised the specter of returning to the pre-penicillin eras when few if any treatments existed against infections.
"If we had taken the long distant view in what we are doing clinically over a long period time, we should have tried to broaden our arsenal in dealing with bacterial infections, and it should have included bacterial-based infections," said Graham Hatfull, a biotechnology professor who works with phage and is co-director of Pitt's Bacteriophage Institute. Last year his team published a study about a phage treatment for acne. "Now with bacterial pathogens on an inevitable march toward resistance, we are wishing we had started earlier on phage therapy."
I copied this from my facebook page so I guess the stuff below "stays"!
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