Ep 51 The Path of Most (Antibiotic) Resistance

This Podcast Will Kill You

Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

Health & Fitness, Science

4.8 • 17.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2020

⏱️ 111 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

No story of antibiotics would be complete without the rise of resistance. As promised in our last episode, this week we dive into what the WHO calls ‘one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today’ - antibiotic resistance. In the decades since their development, misuse and overuse of antibiotics has led to many becoming all but useless, and our world seems on the verge of plunging into a post-antibiotic era. How does resistance work? Where did it come from? Why did it spread so far so rapidly? Is there any hope? In this episode, we answer all these questions and more. First, we explore the many ways bacteria evade the weaponry of antibiotic compounds. Then we trace the global spread of these resistant bugs by examining the major contributors to their misuse and overuse. And finally we assess the current global status of antibiotic resistant infections (spoiler: it’s very bad) and search for any good news (spoiler: there’s a lot!). To chat about one super cool and innovative alternative to antibiotics, we are joined by the amazing Dr. Steffanie Strathdee (Twitter: @chngin_the_wrld), Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences, Harold Simon Professor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Co-Director at the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics. Dr. Strathdee provides a firsthand account of helping her husband, Dr. Tom Patterson, fight off a deadly superbug infection by calling on a long-forgotten method of treating bacterial infections: phage therapy. To read more about phage therapy and Dr. Strathdee’s incredible experiences, check out The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Justin from The Generation Y, and we're doing a four-part series
0:03.7	on rambling the story of Khalif Browder, a young boy falsely accused of stealing a backpack
0:08.7	and held at Rikers Island for three years without trial. This story is about a young life caught
0:14.4	in the middle of the justice system. Listen to Generation Y on Amazon Music or wherever you get your
0:19.2	podcasts. I don't think it was a moment of madness. I think it was almost like a business transaction.
0:24.9	The thing that made my sense to him was to get rid of him.
0:28.4	Season nine of Tinfold More Wicked is now available on exactly right. New episodes every Monday.
0:35.1	Follow the show on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:41.2	Hi, I'm Stephanie Stratty, people call me Steph. I'm the associate dean of Global House
0:46.0	Alliance at the University of California San Diego. And I now co-direct the new Center for
0:50.8	Innovative Bage Applications and Therapeutics known as I-Path. That's the first Bage Therapy Center
0:56.8	in North America. But that's the end of the story. You want to hear how I got there, right?
1:01.9	Well, it's a crazy story. People often don't even believe that it was true.
1:07.3	But it really is. My husband and I went on vacation in Egypt in the fall of 2015.
1:14.5	And we're scientists. We travel together. And we always do off-the-beaten path kinds of things.
1:21.7	We had a dream of going to see King Tut's tomb and we floated down the Nile River in a wonderful ship.
1:30.0	So everything went great until the night before we were supposed to see King Tut's tomb.
1:35.2	And Tom and I had this wonderful meal on top of a cruise ship and he got violently all afterwards.
1:41.5	I mean, he was throwing up all over the place. And I just thought he had a bad muscle or something
1:47.2	like that. But actually, he got very sick. We had to call a doctor to the ship. The doctor said he's
1:52.3	going into shock. There was no hospital in Luxor where the ship was docked. So we ended up having
1:59.0	to go to a community clinic. There they diagnosed him with pancreatitis, which is essentially an
	...

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