The living medicine : how a lifesaving cure was nearly lost--and why it will rescue us when antibiotics fail

The living medicine How a lifesaving cure was nearly lost--and why it will rescue us when antibiotics fail

Lina Zeldovich

Book - 2024

"A remarkable story of the scientists behind a long-forgotten and life-saving cure: the healing viruses that can conquer antibiotic resistant bacterial infections First discovered in 1917, bacteriophages-or "phages"-are living medicines: viruses that devour bacteria. Ubiquitous in the environment, they are found in water, soil, inside plants and animals, and in the human body. When phages were first recognized as medicines, their promise seemed limitless. Grown by research scientists and physicians in France, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere to target specific bacteria, they cured cholera, dysentery, bubonic plague, and other deadly infectious diseases. But after Stalin's brutal purges and the rise of antibiotics, phage t...herapy declined and nearly was lost to history-until today. In The Living Medicine, acclaimed science journalist Lina Zeldovich reveals the remarkable history of phages, told through the lives of the French, Soviet, and American scientists who discovered, developed, and are reviving this unique cure for seemingly-intractable diseases. Ranging from Paris to Soviet Georgia to Egypt, India, South Africa, remote islands in the Far East, and America, The Living Medicine shows how phages once saved tens of thousands of lives. Today, with our antibiotic shield collapsing, Zeldovich demonstrates how phages are making our food safe and, in cases of dire emergency, rescuing people from the brink of death. They may be humanity's best defense against the pandemics to come. Filled with adventure, human ambition, tragedy, technology, irrepressible scientists and the excitement of their innovation, The Living Medicine offers a vision of how our future may be saved by knowledge from the past"--

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Subjects
Bacteriophages > Therapeutic use.
Published
New York : St. Martin's Press 2024.
Language
English
Main Author
Lina Zeldovich (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
304 p.
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781250283382
  • The surge of the superbugs
  • The parasite of microbes
  • A Georgian in Paris
  • Phages rise to fame and glory
  • Together in Tiflis
  • The great terror
  • Hell on Earth, cholera in water, phages underground
  • The rise of the superbugs
  • Phages endangered
  • A Georgian in Maryland
  • The phage whisperer
  • Naive and stubborn, a winning combination
  • The superbug that won the Oscar
  • and the FDA
  • The perfect storm's aftermath
  • Phaging into the future.
Review by Booklist Review

Antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections are on the rise even as pharmaceutical companies' investment in and development of novel antibiotics are declining. Is there any therapeutic "cavalry" that can ride to our rescue? In her intriguing blend of biography and microbiology, journalist Zeldovich ardently makes the case for greater use of bacteriophages (phages). These viruses naturally prey upon bacteria and have been dubbed "bacteria eaters." Zeldovich concisely portrays their creepy anatomy as "oblong bodies, spidery legs, and sharp, scorpion-like tails." Sewage and rivers are flush with different kinds of phages. Preparations of phages can be swallowed or injected. Phages do not harm humans or animals as they are readily removed by the spleen, liver, and immune system. Phages were even featured in Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith (1925). Zeldovich reports on the successful clinical use of phages, beginning in the early 1900s primarily in Russia. She details the personal lives and professional careers of two important microbiologists, Giorgi Eliava and Félix d'Hérelle, and describes the landmark work on phage therapy performed at the Eliava Institute of Bacteriophages, Microbiology and Virology in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. Zeldovich includes clinical cases demonstrating the remarkable effectiveness of phage therapy. A fascinating overview of a promising, safe, and unique treatment of severe bacterial diseases.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this robust study, journalist Zeldovich (The Other Dark Matter) explores the medical promise of bacteriophages, "a special type of virus that preys on bacteria." She explains that relying on antibiotics to fight bacterial infections has led to the evolution of "superbugs" impervious to the drugs. Phages can succeed where antibiotics fail, according to Zeldovich, because they evolve alongside the bacteria they destroy and only target one type of bacteria, meaning that phages that kill salmonella, for instance, won't harm gut bacteria that help humans digest food. Highlighting remarkable success stories, Zeldovich tells how in 2023, Russian cinematographer Andrey Zvyaginstev, who was suffering from an infection in his lungs that prevented doctors from giving him a life-saving lung transplant, received a phage infusion that so thoroughly beat the infection, his lungs healed and he no longer needed the transplant. Zeldovich makes a strong case that medical professionals are underutilizing phages, and she provides fascinating historical background on why they've been overlooked, describing how phage therapies' popularity in the Soviet Union, where they could be purchased over the counter at pharmacies, led Western doctors to view them with suspicion. Though this covers much of the same ground as Tom Ireland's The Good Virus, it's nonetheless a strong overview of phage treatments' history and benefits. Agent: Luba Ostashevsky, Pande Literary. (Oct.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A bracing look through the murky depths at "phages," viruses used to battle bacteria in treating illness. Science writer Zeldovich grew up in the former Soviet Union, reading scientific articles "not as stories but as puzzles, from which occasionally--if I managed to figure out enough words to form a sentence--I could deduce some meaning." One word she knew from experience was the Russian word fordysentery, which, years afterward, pointed her to the possibilities of "biological entities…[that] have been feeding on bacteria for eons, so they are better equipped than our pharmaceutical industry to keep up with bacterial evolution." Given CDC statistics that 1 in 7 Americans suffers from some foodborne illness each year, and given that many bacteria are now resistant to or even immune from treatment with conventional antibiotics, the prima facie case for using these specialized bacteria is strong indeed. Yet, as Zeldovich discovers, making phages part of the American pharmacopoeia is easier said than done: In Europe and the United States they're interdicted, for creating phages means manipulating the stuff that otherwise winds up in sewage treatment plants. Still, it's fascinating to learn of free-floating bacteria in the Ganges River (which one suspects would be an undesirable place to take a swim) that in untreated water "dissolved cholera vibrions"; just so, it's sobering to hear that the potentially deadly MRSA bacteria, so common in American hospitals, can be killed by viruses in short order thanks to advances made in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. In a well-written book that ranges widely through scientific history, marked by episodes of suppression on the part of both the Soviet authorities and the American medical and pharmaceutical establishments, Zeldovich makes a convincing case for phages helping us all in the future. A capably told microbiological detective story, with the promise of magic bullets to come. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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