THE LIVING MEDICINE

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 for dysentery, 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.