This is an amazing overview of the problems with overuse of antibiotics. The most obvious is that antibiotics, critical to treating bacterial infections, become less effective (and replacements are slower to come, for a mix of scientific and economic reasons). Less obvious is the harm caused by changing the balance of bacteria in humans and in the environment, leading to various illnesses, obesity, etc., well after the antibiotic treatment ceases. Clearly presented and from an authority in the field.

The strongest arguments are against early-childhood (especially age 0-2) use of antibiotics, due to great potential for long-term harm, and against routine agricultural use (due to environmental and other harm and limited benefit other than somewhat improved food yields). This seems like a well reasoned course of action, along with studying the use of antibiotics to treat infections and development of newer, more narrow spectrum antibiotics for use. ( )

I detected a note of slight envy as Blaser describes the award of a Nobel prize to the WA pair of Marshall and Warren for; isolation of Heliobacter Pylori in pure culture, for establishing its association with gastritis and with peptic ulcer disease....he is very precise about this description and points out that it was not for "drinking bacteria and causing an ulcer thus proving the theory"...and there are still a lot of questions surrounding the role of Heliobacter pylori. As his story unfolds (and he mentions the need for a new paradigm about bacteria in our bodies) I get the impression that he is angling for a Nobel prize himself. Well maybe he is onto something.
Some of the chapters here are a bit tedious as they describe his experiments in turgid detail ...almost like a pop version of a scientific paper ....but he does make some very powerful points in my view:
1. That the importance and role of bacteria in our lives is hugely underestimated
2. That when we take antibiotics we knock out a lot of good bacteria as well as some troublesome ones.
3. That we have an incredibly diverse flora in, and on, our bodies that has evolved over 200,000 years (and, in reality, probably right back to early animals).
4. The role of Heliobacter pylori in our gut is probably more complex than just causing ulcers...it may have protective effects as well. Worth reading Jonothan Eisen's blog for some critical comment on the claims here. (Basically that causality hasn't been shown yet).
5. (Not too sure about how convinced I am on this point) .....There appears to be some linkages between taking antibiotics in childhood and the rash of "modern" diseases like obesity, asthma, celiac/gluten intolerance, irritable bowel syndrome, food allergies, autism, height of people. But Blaser doesn't seem to be carrying the bulk of the medical establishment along with his thinking. Though, this may not be surprising given the unholy alliance between medical research funding and big pharma.
6. We are running out of antibiotics and need to cut back on their usage and develop more targeted (rather than broad spectrum) antibiotics.
When I started reading the book, I was quite impressed thinking that I was going to learn a lot about the flora in our gut ...and we certainly get a good couple of chapters on the importance of bacteria in our lives: Humanity is just a speck in this massively bacterial world". The (genetic) distance between E. Coli and Clostridium - two common bacteria - is much greater than the distance between corn and us".
Our (body) microbes have millions of unique genes ...whilst our human genome has just 23,000 genes. So 99 percent of the genes in our bodies are bacterial and only about 1 percent are human. And maybe this diversity gives us protection....one of the bugs there might just swing into action when faced with some potentially toxic problem for our bodies.
Some other useful facts: our body is composed of an estimated 30 trillion human cells but is host to more than 100 trillion bacterial and fungal cells. Collectively these bacteria weigh about three pounds.....or about the same as our brains......I assume that this is "wet" weight in both cases
So where do I come out after reading his evidence? I guess that I'm convinced about the importance of our gut flora....though I was convinced about this before anyway. And there is clearly a huge amount to learn about the role of this microbiome. (Though also the role of our junk DNA in conjunction with this microbiome......and he doesn't mention junk DNA).
And his suggestion that dosing our kids with antibiotics may have a big role in triggering the "modern" diseases described above......sounds plausible though clearly needs a lot more work.
Also interesting is that I am reading this book in the midst of the Covid19 pandemic in 2020 and he was writing in 2014 about the dangers of something like this.....(though also something more "bacterial", rather than viral, in nature).
Overall I rate it as about 4.5 stars. ( )

I found this book to contain a great deal of well researched, interesting information about the effects of antibiotics (and their overuse) on our microbiome and how this impacts on our health. I do think the author needs to consider other aspects of our environment (e.g. pollution, endocrine disruptors, pesticides etc) than just antibiotics and the microbiome, but this does not seem to be part of the scope for this book. The writing is fast paced, and personable without irrelevant extraneous material. The science is easy to understand and summarised fairly well, however, I would have like more indepth details.

OTHER BOOKS

~ The Killers Within: The Deadly Rise Of Drug-Resistant Bacteria by Michael Shnayerson, Mark J. Plotkin

~ Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story by Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, John Peterson Myers

~ Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA by Maryn McKenna

~The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health by David R. Montgomery & Anne Biklé

~ Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills by Russell L. Blaylock

~ This Is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society by Kathleen McAuliffe
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How the overuse of antibiotics is fueling our modern plagues.

This book is essentially three parts: The opening, where the author lays out his case; the middle, where he offers the best evidence he can present to support his hypothesis; the closing, where solutions are offered. The quality of each part is very different. When laying out the case, he does a very good job of explaining his thinking. When offering evidence, he lost me a bit - actually, a lot - because the associations and causations don't seem that clear. With the closing, he shines, because the solutions are very practical, implementable, and include a discussion of FMT, which has blown my mind since hearing about it. That actually might ultimately be the best solution. So if he's right about the loss of the key parts of our microbiome, then the solution is very present. Unfortunately, even if he is 100% correct about his findings, it might take a long time to achieve consensus, and lives will be lost or compromised in the interim. He has lots of hard, outreach, PSA, clinical trial work to do, on top of what he's already done. The day is short, and the work is long. ( )