Re-thinking the war on micro-organisms

Antibiotics underpin all of modern medicine. Alarmingly, we are nearing the end of the antibiotic era. Bacteria and viruses are evolving faster than scientific innovation. Trivial infections we hardly think about now will once again become fatal.

The Race [Michael Burton] proposes that we must now join the race to evolve with them. It also presents a mirror to ourselves to question personal and societal lifestyle practices and our self-perceived superiority over other organisms. Who do we think we are?

Maggot Cohabitation
A first project is concerned with maggots which have been used throughout medical history as a painless way of treating wounds because they remove dead and infected tissue, while leaving healthy tissue intact. But they fell into disuse when antibiotics were first introduced in the 1940s.

Medical MaggotsMedics now recognise that maggots have advantages over more recent forms of treatment, as they kill the bacteria that cause infection, including the so-called antibiotic-resistant superbugs. There is also some evidence that maggots also stimulate the wound to heal. Their re-introduction in hospitals could therefore enable NHS to save millions.

Maggot Cohabitation encourages us to invest in the symbiotic relationship pre and post treatments. You are encouraged to keep at home special portable receptacles that would allow you to follow the life cycle. The maggots would be delivered as larvae to your home and you carry them to the hospital. At the end of the treatment, you’d release them as flies, and they would take your genetic material with them as they fly away which is much more poetic than the current practice which consists of incinerating the maggots once they have finished their healing job.

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See Also

Maggot calculator for wound size

ZooBiotic Ltd (medical sterile maggots)