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> To do this, we essentially need to develop something that will cause serious harm to the bacteria and yet not harm human cells. The other problem is we depen
by sitharus 3y ago
> To do this, we essentially need to develop something that will cause serious harm to the bacteria and yet not harm human cells.
The other problem is we depend on mutualistic bacteria to survive, if we kill all bacteria in our bodies we’ll die of malnutrition. And even worse sometimes the problem is those mutualistic bacteria getting out of balance, so we need to kill some while promoting an increase of others.
And those bacteria are constantly topped up from the environment, so we can live in a sterile environment our whole lives. It’s a delicate balance, we can’t just throw anti-bacterial things around without thought.
- onetimeuse92304 3y agoUsually antibiotic treatments do kill significant portion of bacterial flora. That's why antibiotics are typically followed by probiotic preparations to replenish our bodies with "good" bacteria. This is not necessarily done to prevent us from dying of malnutrition. The bigger problem is that lacking "good" bacteria, we can have "bad" bacteria take over the void, causing even more problems.