A growing number of bacterial diseases are becoming resistant to tried and trusted antibiotic treatments. Newer types of antibiotics also lose their efficacy against perpetually rebellious bacteria that cause illness, infectious lesions and loss of lives. Bacteria seem to acquire their drug resistance by swapping genes with other organisms or sampling antibiotics and developing a resistance to them.1 Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) causes a universal problem with sepsis in post-surgical wards. Other infections due to fungi, yeasts, mycoplasmas, and parasites have also become resistant to standard medical treatments. What is behind this microbial rebellion that is gaining the upper hand in hospitals? In answer to an urgent plea from doctors for intervention,2 we need to first address the cause of the problem. It is not only that our antibiotics no longer work. Some still can—in a petri dish. But when bacteria hide under a blanket of slime, called a biofilm,3 the antibiotics cannot reach them. Yet we continue to use them and kill off beneficial bacteria—our probiotics as a matter of course.
Where are your Clinical Trials?
It has proven to be difficult, if not impossible, to proceed to full-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for most of the natural methods that cannot be patented or otherwise monopolized.
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