American citizens should be dissatisfied, if not wholly repulsed, with the selfishness of the US Healthcare system. Every year, fourteen million people in the US enter inescapable debt due to expensive healthcare—which 44% of Americans can not afford in the first place.
Considering the high cost of medical services in the United States, many wonder what contributes to the outrageous amount of money circulating in our nation’s hospitals. The simple answer is corporate greed—specifically, pharmaceutical company avarice.
Every year, pharmaceutical companies task medical examiners with the most preferred form of treatment for diseases and infections: antibiotics. Many patients believe their money is well-spent, considering the initial effect of successful antibiotic treatments. However, antibiotic treatment costs continue to rise, and a new problem has emerged.
Antibiotic resistance refers to an organism’s ability to defeat the drug designed to destroy it. Most health experts argue that antibiotic resistance is the most dangerous threat to medical treatments that face our modern world. Bacteria continue to grow more resilient with every dose of antibiotics, specifically 3 million in the last year alone. This issue must be addressed; however, there is a massive problem.
Pharmaceutical companies have 18.6 billion dollars accumulating from antibiotics and are still deciding whether to relinquish their cash cow. However, unfortunately for these pharmaceutical companies, a new advancement in medical technology has risen.
Phage therapy refers to using bacteriophages, which have one job and one job only: to kill bacteria. Bacteriophages work similarly to antibiotics but maintain a crucial difference. Every phage can only target and eliminate the specific bacteria it has been designed to attack, whereas antibiotics eliminate a broader spectrum of bacteria, including the good kind. Therefore, phages targeting particular bacteria will expose medical patients to a more efficient treatment method.
Although phage therapy sounds perfect in theory, researchers still have critical questions regarding its effect on bacteria’s resistance. Unfortunately, bacteria can also become resistant to bacteriophages. However, there is a vital detail pharmaceutical companies don’t want you to know.
Bacteria can only be resistant to one form of treatment at a time. For instance, strep throat is caused by Streptococcus pyogenes, which is incredibly difficult to treat due to its high antibiotic resistance. If doctors were to prescribe antibiotics and phage therapy, the Streptococcus pyogenes would only be resistant to one treatment at a time. Therefore, if the bacteria became resistant to antibiotics, phage therapy would still be able to target it; the same is true for the contrary.
Another point is that phage therapy is exceptionally cheap compared to antibiotics. Not only would phage therapy provide an affordable treatment option, but it would also help treat many out-of-control sicknesses caused by rogue bacteria.
Antibiotics have failed to provide a sustainable solution to illnesses and have contributed to the immense American debt. The unchecked greed of the pharmaceutical industry has only worsened the problem. America must evaluate our healthcare system and implement a more sustainable and ethical alternative: phage therapy. Phage therapy will not only allow for the use of antibiotics but also ensure that continuous doctor visits can be avoided over time, thus saving everyone money and protecting their health.
