The Good Virus - Ireland, Tom
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At every moment, within our bodies and all around us, trillions of microscopic combatants are waging a war that shapes our health and life on Earth. Countless times per second, viruses known as phages attack and destroy bacteria while leaving all other life forms, including us, unscathed. Vastly outnumbering the viruses that do us harm, phages power ecosystems, drive evolutionary innovation, and harbor a remarkable capacity to heal life-threatening infections when conventional antibiotics fail. Yet most of us have never heard of them, thinking of viruses only as enemies to be feared. The Good…mehr

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Produktbeschreibung
At every moment, within our bodies and all around us, trillions of microscopic combatants are waging a war that shapes our health and life on Earth. Countless times per second, viruses known as phages attack and destroy bacteria while leaving all other life forms, including us, unscathed. Vastly outnumbering the viruses that do us harm, phages power ecosystems, drive evolutionary innovation, and harbor a remarkable capacity to heal life-threatening infections when conventional antibiotics fail. Yet most of us have never heard of them, thinking of viruses only as enemies to be feared. The Good Virus prompts us to reconsider, and to discover, how these viruses could save countless lives if we can learn to harness their extraordinary abilities. Taking us inside the ongoing quest to use phages' powers for good, Tom Ireland introduces us to the brilliant, often eccentric, scientists who have fought to realize phages' potential in the face of doubt and political intrigue. We meet the renegade French-Canadian scientist who discovered phages and pioneered their use as medicine over a century ago, leading them to be hailed as the world's first genuine antibiotic years before penicillin. We learn why, in some pockets of the former Soviet Union, drinking a vial of phages remains as common as taking an over-the-counter drug. We follow the intrepid scientists and doctors now racing to make "phage therapy" work worldwide as the threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria grows ever more urgent-even as other researchers uncover how phages bolster our everyday immunity, help generate the oxygen we breathe, and furnish the origins for breakthrough technologies like CRISPR. Unveiling the hidden rulers of the microbial world and celebrating the surprising power of viruses to heal, not harm, The Good Virus forever changes how we see nature's most maligned life forms.
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Autorenporträt
Tom Ireland is an award-winning science journalist and editor of the Biologist magazine. He regularly contributes to BBC Science Focus and has written for the Guardian, New Scientist, and BBC News. He lives in Hertfordshire, England.
Rezensionen
Most viruses do no harm to humans - and, as this fascinating book explains, a large class of them might even prove our saviours ... [Phages] regulate our gut microbiome, are crucial to marine ecosystems, and inspired the modern Crispr technique of gene-editing ... All this and more is thrillingly recounted in Tom Ireland's superb book. This is real luxury-class science writing, exploring how a "Stalin-tainted" idea from long ago can be rehabilitated, alternating scientist interviews and vivid case studies of miraculous-seeming cures with historical narrative and limpid biotechnological explanations ... He also demonstrates excellent comic timing. Steven Poole Telegraph