Waubonsee Community College

Good germs, bad germs, health and survival in a bacterial world, Jessica Snyder Sachs

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-273) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Good germs, bad germs

bibliography

85814003

Jessica Snyder Sachs

health and survival in a bacterial world

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

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 microbiomeSeven key terms and conventions -- Prologue : A good war gone bad -- Ricky's story -- Daniel's story -- Revenge of the microbes? -- pt. 1. The war on germs -- From miasmas to microbes -- Germ theory reborn -- The sanitarians -- The search for magic bullets -- pt. 2. Life on man -- The 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 -- The 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 -- The dirt vaccine -- Old friends -- Beyond immunity -- pt. 4. Bugs on drugs -- A killer in the nursery -- An end to bacterial disease? -- Microscopic mating games -- The bacterial superorganism -- Danger ignored -- Old habits, new insights -- Out of the hospital and into our daily lives -- The reservoir within -- Resistance by the shovel -- Down on the farm -- The antibiotic paradoxpt. 5. Fighting smarter not harder -- The good old days? -- Preserving antibiotics : 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 : defang, deflect, and deploy -- 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 -- The dragon within -- Enhancing the bionic human -- From sepsis to chronic inflammation -- Immunobug immunodrugs -- Tweaking the bug -- Into the future -- Coda : Embracing the microbiome