{"id":128,"date":"2003-07-02T06:48:43","date_gmt":"2003-07-02T12:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/?p=128"},"modified":"2003-07-02T06:48:43","modified_gmt":"2003-07-02T12:48:43","slug":"the-phage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/2003\/07\/02\/the-phage\/","title":{"rendered":"The Phage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nope, it&#8217;s not Star Trek science&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Though, I have to admit, when I saw the article, the term &#8220;phage&#8221; caught my attention.  The Phage was a kind of disease or plague that a species of &#8220;bad guys&#8221; suffered from on Star Trek Voyager.<br \/>\nIn <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/news\/medtech\/0,1286,59430,00.html\">this article from Wired News<\/a>, though, it&#8217;s something different.  In the real world, it may be a viable alternative to the massive use of antibiotics that we&#8217;ve fallen to using everytime someone gets the sniffles.  My wife still suffers from a wounded resistance to common colds and flus thanks to an overuse of antibiotics.  Though, a far more disturbing trend is strains of bacteria that are more and more resistant to antibiotics.  That is what these &#8220;phages&#8221;, short for &#8220;bacteriophage&#8221;, are designed to attack.  Bacteriophages, or &#8220;bacteria eaters&#8221;, are designed to destroy one particular bacteria, leaving all the beneficial bacteria alone.  Unlike antibiotics.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, now for the science-ficiton bent&#8230;  Can anyone see how this technology might go horribly wrong?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nope, it&#8217;s not Star Trek science&#8230; Though, I have to admit, when I saw the article, the term &#8220;phage&#8221; caught my attention. The Phage was a kind of disease or plague that a species of &#8220;bad guys&#8221; suffered from on Star Trek Voyager. In this article from Wired News, though, it&#8217;s something different. In the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-current-events","category-science-and-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fantasist.net\/scroll\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}