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

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.)