The fight against microorganisms | Dianne Fair | TEDxFSCJ

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Dr. Dianne Fair discusses antibiotics, antibiotic resistance and optional therapies for treatment of infectious disease. With global economy, increasing populations and travel, healthcare is fighting an uphill battle against microorganisms such as Staphylococcus bacteria or E. coli that were once easily defeated. We need options as stronger and stronger antibiotic resistant microbes are playing a bigger role in our health and that of our loved ones.

What if you or a loved one
were diagnosed with an infectious disease:

strep throat, an ear infection,
bacterial pneumonia,

tuberculosis, or a sexually
transmitted disease?

Now imagine that there are
no drugs that will work

in effecting a cure for your infection.

This is pretty scary.

This is happening right now.

There are people dying,
just like they used to before 1928,

when penicillin was discovered.

Are we about to fall
into the edge of the volcano?

That would not be so good.

What I would like to propose today

is that we need to encourage
young and old scientists

to explore new opportunities
and new therapies.

Not just antibiotics.

What else do we have?

This is one of my heroes,

a Scottish microbiologist who became
Sir Alexander Fleming.

He discovered penicillin in 1928,

and he was worried
about antibiotic resistance, too.

Very, very concerned.

Antibiotics? Well, what are they?

Think of them as tiny chemical weapons
that are produced by bacteria and fungi,

so that they can kill off competitors
in a nutrient-limited environment.

These genes for antibiotics have been
around for 4 million years,

long before we humans needed Z-Paks.

So this is not a new thing.

Antibiotic resistance can be
easily detected,

and antibiotic resistance
is another weapon.

Do you remember Spy vs Spy,
if you're old enough?

So it's an escalation of weapons.

The antibiotic producers,
that's one weapon.

The antibiotic resistance
is another weapon.

Antibiotic resistance is one
of those things that my students

- and there's two of them -
I told you I was going to use the picture.

You can detect antibiotic resistance
by growing plate cultures of bacteria.

On the left you have E. coli;
on the right you have Staph aureus.

And those little paper discs are treated
with antibiotics like penicillin,

tetracycline, Vancomycin,
you guys did this, too.

This is not new stuff.

They did great, they did great by the way.

When you look at antibiotic resistance,

this means that we're
now facing Super Bugs.

And I don't mean "super" in a good "Yay!",

"super" in a scary way.

What about bacteria?

You've heard of MRSA,
Methicillin-resistant Staph Aureus.

This one scares me.

What about tuberculosis--

multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis

and extensively
drug-resistant tuberculosis.

They're out there.

These infections are very scary

and they may take one of your loved ones.

Or, God forbid, they'll take you.

C. diff, Clostridium difficile--

this one attacks
the weakest of the patients,

the elderly and the very, very young.

Well, before we all get bummed out,
there have to be some good guys.

There have to be.

My training is soil microbiology
so I love dirt.

Especially the dirt in my garden.

This used to be my son's swing set,
but when he got too big,

and the swing set started getting
tippy, I said, "You know what?

It's going to be a garden box."

Soil bacteria, soil fungi, they are
natural antibiotic producers.

This is one avenue to explore.

How about we start looking
at more soil samples

on Mars, or other extraterrestrial places?

Places even on Earth,

slopes of volcanoes
where bacteria recolonize.

I'm up for that, I'm totally
going to volunteer.

This is cool, this is sci-fi,
this is Star Trek.

How about we use viruses
that attack bacteria

to do the dirty work for us?

The T-even bacteriophages,
one of my favorites is T4.

The "even" stands for the even number.

What they do is they attack bacteria

and kill them, without antibiotics.

This technology has been around,
believe it or not, since the 1930s.

It was discovered in France
by a microbiologist.

The technology was advanced
to clinical applications in the 1950s.

But there's a catch.

This was behind the former Iron Curtain.

This was in Russia, and Poland,
and the original Georgia.

Not our Georgia.

This technology is very effective.

What if pharmaceutical companies

could maybe advance the technology
to treat a patient with a virus,

instead of an antibiotic
or another type of drug?

There's a lot of philosophy.

Viruses, most people think,
are bad or terrible or the bad guys.

But the enemy of my enemy
is my friend, right?

Well, not so fast.

Sometimes, the technology does go awry,

and the viruses will carry genes
that we don't understand.

So, I told you I like Star Trek.

["The enemy of my enemy is
the one I shall kill last."]

It could happen.

Think of all the wonderful,
spicy cuisines that we love:

Thai food, Indian food,

Vietnamese, Cambodian, Eastern European,

West African, Caribbean, Tex Mex.

Yay, Taco Tuesday!

When you look at all
of the herbs and spices

that have been studied,
but only by anecdotal evidence:

turmeric, and peppers, and onions,
and garlic, and lemon grass,

and allspice, and cinnamon,
and coffee, and tea,

and beer.

Yay!

(Laughter)

What would happen if more people
grew their own food?

I garden a lot at home,
with my son and my partner.

And all of these produce
came from our garden.

No, you can't have any, I ate it already.

But I'll trade you.

What have you got to trade?

We make beer, we make cheese,
we have chickens.

They're awesome.

Our little miniature dinosaurs.

What about encouraging young scientists
to work on science fair projects

that might advance one tiny field
of this type of research?

So, when your child comes home,

and they have their first
science project assignment ...

Oh, God.

Put a smile on your face.

Stock up on those art supplies,
stock up on that alcohol,

and say, "Yes, honey, we can do this!"

My son's first project is due in January.

Oh, please help me.

When we went to Hawaii in February,
we really did go to a science fair.

So look, even school children
in Hawaii do science fair projects.

How bad would that be?

Some of them were really, really good.

You'll like this one.

There's an anthropologist,

an American anthropologist
called Jeff Leach.

And after his daughter was
diagnosed with Type I Diabetes,

he moved to Tanzania, and he went native,

living with a hunter-gatherer tribe.

He ate what they ate--lots and lots
of fresh fruit and vegetables;

lots and lots of roots
that they had gathered.

Not a whole lot of protein,

unless that had hunted
and killed on that particular day.

You also eat a lot of dirt

when you consume
fruit and vegetable material.

But what he found in the year

when he was taking
stool samples and blood samples,

was that in humans, with a higher rate
of intestinal worm infections,

they have a lower rate of inflammatory
and autoimmune diseases,

like diabetes, like Crohn's Disease,

like celiac, like irritable bowel,
like rheumatoid arthritis.

Now, I'm not saying go out
and eat dirt and eat worms,

unless that's what you're into.

But what if some aspect
of the parasitic worms,

like tapeworms and hook worms,
was actually beneficial to our health?

Because the immune system is so busy

modulating and controlling
the worm infection,

that is doesn't have time to pay attention

to the inflammation
elsewhere in our bodies.

His project is called
The Human Food Project.

He's got another one
that you might be interested in,

so Google it on break.

It's called The American Gut Project.

And for a small fee,

from anywhere from $99 to $10,000,

you can send in
a fecal sample for testing.

And he'll even do
fecal samples from your dog,

to study the American human gut,
and dog gut as well.

Tempting.

I saved the best for last.

FMT: Fecal Mass Transplantation.

This is used in 2013, the United States

approved this for treatment of C. diff.

It actually works.

When you take
healthy donor fecal material,

and you transplant it into a recipient,

they have a better than 90% chance

of recovery from their C. diff infection.

It sound really gross.

Because here's what you do.

(Laughter)

You can make a frozen poo pill,

as long as the material has been
screened and freed of parasites;

you can receive it by an endoscope;

you can receive it by an enema.

[How about a big bowl of "Poop Soup"?]

(Laughter)

This technology has been around
since the 4th or 5th century in China.

There are recipes online for yellow soup.

Last night, I went online
and did some research.

There are Pinterest pins,

(Laughter)

for do-it-yourself at home.

(Laughter)

There are recipes.

I haven't tried it yet.

It's on my list for 2017.

(Laughter)

No, I haven't tried it.

But what if, what if,

your loved one
has exhausted all the options?

Antibiotics are not working,
they've had multiple surgeries.

They're depressed, they're
in the hospital, they're losing hope.

What if something this simple

could actually help them?

I'd do it. I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I hope that with this very short talk
I have stimulated your imagination

to at least learn more,
read more, find out more.

Antibiotic therapy
won't always be with us.

But there are other avenues to explore.

Yeah, I've read all those books.

That's not my nightstand, I promise.

But people look at you funny

when you're waiting at an airport

to get on a plane for a flight somewhere,

and you have one
of these books in your hand.

But then you mention that you heard
about it on NPR Science Friday,

and then it's all good.

It's all good, they're happy with you.

Anyway, thank you for your kind attention.

(Applause)