Scientists Find New Way To Destroy Anthrax

t0rnt0pieces writes "Yahoo news is reporting a story about how scientists have discovered a new way to combat the anthrax bacteria, even if the strain is drug resistant. The method uses an enzyme from bacteriophages, virii which attack bacteria. The scientists say that this method could even be adapted to combat other virii. This truly looks to be a fantastic breakthrough in the treatment of drug-resistant bacterial infections."

Comments

ARUGH!! PSEDUOSCIENCE EATING MY HEAD!!!

[JabberWokky]

Dear Submittor:

So, which is it? A method to kill bacteria or a method to kill viruses? You know the two are *totally different things*, right?!?!?!

There is no cure for any virus. Never has been, and imo, there won't be in our lifetimes. The best thing we can do is bolster the human immune system before infection (vaccine) or after infection (ranging from simply getting rest to AZT cocktails that always remind me of Milkplus from A Clockwork Orange).

Bacteria, however, can be beaten with a wide varity of medicines, from that trusty old blue moldy favorite, penecillin, to modern antibiotics.

Now repeat after me: Anthrax is a bacteria. This article is about using virus style or derived tools to kill a bacteria. It has nothing to do with combatting viruses (or as you put it, virii). The two are totally different biological forms, like tapeworms and right whales.

Arugh! Even CNN and AP can't get it right, so maybe I should be more forgiving. Maybe I should just blithely lump dogs, cats, sofas and trees into the same generic category and not worry about any sort of technical consideration, especially in a friggin' scientific article submission!!!

Thank you, I have now vented. Bacteria != Viruses.

--
Evan (no reference)

Re:Using a Virus to Destroy Bacteria?

[Jerf]

One: An enzyme is not a living thing. Thus, it is also not a "foreign" living thing. A "foreign" thing it may be, but this is hardly unusual; your body manages to survive well despite the amazing array of foreign things it comes into contact with.

Two: Your body is not an ecosystem. While some aspects may be modelled that way, it can not be completely reduced to an "ecosystem". You have conciousness and a will to live, and you can die, a binary "dead/alive" process that ecosystems can not be said to experience. (While we talk of killing ecosystems, ecosystems always change. The only truly dead ecosystem is the one that contains no life. The state of the ecosystem naturally changes over time; it may change to the point that we say its no longer the same ecosystem, but there's really no natural reason to say such things.)

Thus, even accepting the fallacious point that this treatment consists of an induced viral infection, because we face the possibility of true death, it may make perfect sense to choose not-certain-(and-quite-unlikely-)death (this treatment) over certain death (anthrax), a choice embedded in an ethical system that has no real analogue in your ecosystem reduction. Thus the reduction is of no value.

(On a final note, "Bad things happen when..." is an amazing, horrific oversimplification on just about every level. For instance, try a clear definition of "foreign". It's a hell of a lot harder then you may think. Just as a sampler, would it be "foriegn" to re-introduce the mammoth now into the Great Plains, even though it's now extinct? What about ten years after the extinction? That's just a sampler of the sampler, too; "bad things" do not always happen; more often, the 'foreign' transplantee just dies. Major havoc is the exception, rather then the rule. Proof of that on the body level is your continued existance despite exposure to all kinds of foreign life forms, some of which even get so far as causing you to get a "cold", a significant infection, yet not managing to kill you.)

The only thing I'd worry about this would be..

[pedro]

Some bright guy might attempt to engineer a broad spectrum bacteriophage, which would, of course, shut down our entire foodchain.
That would be bad.
If I was George W., I'd be much more concerned about stuff like this emanating from Iraq than nasty gasses and stuff.
After all, we're talking Doomsday weapon here...
Total climate change, and utter devastation with but one tiny twiddle of a genetic code.
I pray that these guys have thought this through..

Re:The only thing I'd worry about this would be..

[RML]

If a broad spectrum bacteriophage was possible, the possibility of it never happening by random mutation is approximately 0.00000000% (viruses mutate very quickly, and there are lots and lots and lots of them). And if it happened, being able to infect all bacteria would be such a terrific advantage that it would already have overrun the planet. So the fact that no such virus has wiped out the foodchain yet is a good reason to think that it's impossible.

Re:The only thing I'd worry about this would be..

[gene_tailor]

>Some bright guy might attempt to engineer a broad spectrum bacteriophage

You'll be reassured to know that phages have exquisite specificity for their targets-- according to the Nature article:
"High-affinity binding (the affinity constant Ka = 3-6 10X^8, similar to affinity-matured antibodies) is directed towards species- or strain-specific cell-wall carbohydrates".
So creating a broad-specificity phage would be like making a broad-specifity antibody-- kind of a contradiction in terms.