Superbugs' Natural Predator (Rebroadcast)
Prognosis: Misconception
Bloomberg
4.1 • 838 Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We continue our look back at some of our favorite episodes from the podcast. Joel Grimwood was almost certainly going to die. The pump that kept his failing heart going had become infected, and surgery after surgery had scraped away parts of his chest. Drugs didn’t work because the bacteria were in a slime, impenetrable to antibiotics. What saved his life was a little-known treatment called phage therapy. Popular in the former Soviet Union, they’ve fallen out of favor in the West. The viruses are the natural predator of bacteria, and a small number of scientists are trying to turn them against the threat.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Are you looking for a new podcast about stuff related to money? |
| 0:05.3 | Well, today's your lucky day. |
| 0:07.1 | I'm Matt Levine. |
| 0:08.2 | And I'm Katie Greifeld. |
| 0:09.5 | And we are the hosts of Money Stuff, The Podcast. |
| 0:13.0 | Every Friday, we dive into the top stories about Wall Street, finance, and other stuff. |
| 0:17.9 | We have fun. We get weird, and we want you to join us. You can listen to |
| 0:22.0 | Many Stuff the Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:29.8 | Hi, Prognosis listeners. This is your host, Michelle Fay-Cortez. We've spent this month |
| 0:35.6 | looking back at some of our favorite stories from the podcast. |
| 0:39.5 | For our last rebroadcast, we hear how scientists are trying to revive a long-forgotten technology, |
| 0:46.1 | once popular in the former Soviet Union, in a desperate effort to combat superbugs. Thanks and enjoy. |
| 1:12.6 | Music to combat superbugs. Thanks and enjoy. As infections become harder to treat because of antibiotic resistance, scientists are enlisting help from bacteria's oldest enemy, viruses. So-called bacteria phages, literally bacteria eaters, are viruses that target bacteria. |
| 1:21.6 | While researchers have known about them for a century, and even use them to treat people, |
| 1:26.6 | these biological agents have been largely |
| 1:28.5 | ignored in most of the world since penicillin became available. |
| 1:33.2 | Until recently, that is. |
| 1:37.4 | Welcome to Prognosis, a podcast about health and science, medical technology, and the changes |
| 1:43.0 | that are underway across the world. |
| 1:45.5 | I'm your host, Michelle Faye Cortez. |
| 1:49.1 | For our third season, we're delving deeply into the human cost of bacterial infections that |
| 1:54.2 | can't be stopped by even our most potent antibiotics. |
... |
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