The Renaissance of Phage Therapy

Abstract

One morning in 1993, Carl Merril read an alarming article in The Washington Post. It told of the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, a story that had been ­creeping into the press since the early 1980s. From Tokyo to New York City, the Post wrote, hospitals were contending with a new breed of superbugs, bacteria that had grown immune to the strongest of medicines – a situation that had resulted from the overuse of antibiotics. Though Merril was well aware of the problem, this lengthy report was particularly disturbing. “We’re starting to see organisms that we can’t treat with anything,” John G. Bartlett, chief of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, told the newspaper. “What do we do? We give drugs and we pray.”