Antibiotics Niet: Soviet use of viruses to cure being considered in U.S.

Antibiotics were “niet” during the Soviet era and, as an alternative, doctors used viruses to cure infections, and this idea is now being considered in the U.S. Overuse of these drugs has produced bacterial resistance, and many diseases that have previously been cured by antibiotics now have resistant bacteria as infectious agents. A recent news article in the journal Nature reported how Western scientists have taken up the study of using viruses to cure bacterial diseases as an alternative to using traditional drugs. In the heyday of the former Soviet Union, doctors did not have access to the antibiotics of the West and so they had to improvise and come up with other ways to treat patients with infections. Viruses are also called phages (rhymes with dodges) and bacteriophages are viruses that kill bacteria. The way this happens is the phage gets into a bacterial cell and then forces the bacterial...