Genomic Loopholes and Other Weapons

Back in 2000, before MRSA—Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus—had become a household word, Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg wrote in the journal Science that “the future of humanity and microbes [would] likely unfold as episodes of a suspense thriller that could be titled Our Wits Versus Their Genes.” Thirteen years later, it is “their genes” that seem to be winning out. In the United States alone, roughly 2 million people suffer from drug-resistant infections each year; according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, about 23,000 of them die.

While the microbes have cracked almost all of our codes—rapidly evolving around one drug after another—we have yet to fully crack many of theirs. Scientists have a growing understanding of the molecular wizardry by which bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, but they have yet to circumvent it. In the meantime, doctors and patients are forced to fight these drug-resistant infections with alternatives that harken back to the medical stone age (think toxic chemicals and surgical removal of whole organs to stop bacterial infections). And even those solutions are failing.

Ten years ago, experts worried about our eventual return to the pre-antibiotic era of medicine, when common bacterial infections were