| Edition |
1st ed. |
| Description |
x, 290 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-273) and index. |
| Contents |
The war on germs -- Life on man -- Too clean? -- Bugs on drugs -- Fighting smarter, not harder -- Beyond lethal force: defang, deflect, and deploy -- Fixing the patient -- Coda: embracing the microbiome. |
|
Seven key terms and conventions -- Prologue : A good war gone bad -- Ricky's story -- Daniel's story -- Revenge of the microbes? -- pt. 1. War on germs -- From miasmas to microbes -- Germ theory reborn -- Sanitarians -- Search for magic bullets -- pt. 2. Life on man -- Body as ecosystem -- Into the mouths of babes -- Life on the surface -- Life on the inside -- Bugs in space -- Where no biologist has gone before -- Inner tube of life -- Who's the boss? -- A new window opens -- Stealth infections or innocent bystanders? -- pt. 3. Too clean? -- Hair trigger -- From Hippocrates to the hygiene hypothesis -- A history of self-destruction -- Children in the cowshed -- Teaching tolerance -- Innate immunity -- Dirt vaccine -- Old friends -- Beyond immunity -- pt. 4. Bugs on drugs -- A killer in the nursery -- An end to bacterial disease? -- Microscopic mating games -- Bacterial superorganism -- Danger ignored -- Old habits, new insights -- Out of the hospital and into our daily lives -- Reservoir withing -- Resistance by the shovel -- Down on the farm -- Antibiotic paradox -- |
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pt. 5. Fighting smarter not harder -- Good old days? -- Preserving antibiotics a: less is more -- Homing in on the enemy -- Drugs with on -off switches -- Silencing resistance -- Farming out resistance -- Beyond antibiotics : new ways to kill -- Cocoons and frog slime -- pt. 6. Beyond lethal force -- Drugs that disarm -- Vaccines - forewarned is forearmed -- Domesticate and deploy -- Prescription probiotics -- Fighting fire with fire -- A superhero for the mouth -- Transgenic probiotics -- Probiotics for livestock -- A second neolithic revolution -- pt. 7. Fixing the patient -- Dragon within -- Enhancing the bionic human -- From sepsis to chronic inflammation -- Immunobug immunodrugs -- Tweaking the bug -- Into the future -- Coda : Embracing the microbiome -- Notes -- Further reading -- Acknowledgments -- Index. |
| Summary |
Public sanitation and antibiotic drugs have brought about historic increases in the human life span; they have also unintentionally produced new health crises by disrupting the intimate, age-old balance between humans and the microorganisms that inhabit our bodies and our environment. As a result, antibiotic resistance now ranks among the gravest medical problems of modern times. [This book] addresses not only this issue but also what has become known as the "hygiene hypothesis"--An argument that links the over-sanitation of modern life to now-epidemic increases in immune and other disorders. In telling the story of what went terribly wrong in our war on germs, [the author] explores our emerging understanding of the symbiotic relationship between the human body and its resident microbes -- which outnumber its human cells by a factor of nine to one! The book also offers a ... look into a future in which antibiotics will be designed and used more wisely, and beyond that, to a day when we may replace antibacterial drugs and cleansers with bacterial ones -- each custom-designed for maximum health benefits.-Dust jacket. |
| Subject |
Microbiology.
|
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Microbiology. |
|
Medical microbiology.
|
|
Medical microbiology. |
|
Bacteriology.
|
|
Bacteriology. |
|
Communicable diseases.
|
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Communicable diseases. |
| ISBN |
9780809016426 paperback |
|
9780809050635 hardcover alkaline paper |
|
0809050633 hardcover alkaline paper |
|
0809016427 paperback |
|
