Opinion: The FDA needs to embrace phage therapy to help fight antimicrobial resistance
My daughter, Mallory, died in 2017 at the age of 25 from a multiply resistant bacterial lung infection that followed a double-lung transplant necessitated by cystic fibrosis. In the weeks before her death, my wife, Diane Shader Smith, and I sought out and obtained an innovative yet underused treatment for antibiotic-resistant bacteria known as phage therapy. Her physicians administered the therapy, but it was too late to save Mallory’s life. An autopsy, though, confirmed that the phages had reached their target and had started to work.
Resistance of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes to drugs designed to keep them in check, collectively known as antimicrobial resistance, poses one of the gravest threats to global health today. With bacteria having developed resistance to most antibiotics, and a dwindling number of new antibiotics being developed, the world faces a future in which common infections are all but untreatable, and where routine surgeries become life-threatening. Against this bleak vision of the future, phage therapy offers a beacon of hope. For it to shine, though, the Food and Drug Administration must loosen its restrictions to facilitate the broader use of phage therapy in the United States.
