Polycomb group proteins

the market, and this outlay was reflected in the cost of treatment – up to $250 a day. It was agreed that neither the oxazolidinones nor the quinolones, licensed for human use, would be given to animals, but before long the agricultural industry had got its hands on analogues of both, either for growth-enhancement or for therapy. Before long animals around the world were found to be abundantly infested with pathogens, with Salmonella or Campylobacter. (The egregious UK agriculture minister, Edwina Curry, lost her job for uttering the unpalatable truth.) In the US consumer groups and the Center for Disease Control, which had for years been campaigning ceaselessly against indiscriminate use of antibiotics, demanded the withdrawal of quinolones from agriculture. As ever, the powerful agricultural lobby lied and intrigued to protect profits. The story of the antibiotics is a melancholy litany of folly and greed. Human nature will not be gainsaid. As Kipling has it, There are only four things certain since Social Progress began – That the Dog returns to his vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire … Attempts to find new antibiotic substances are not now, it seems, a matter of high priority for Big Pharma. The cost of bringing drugs to market has risen alarmingly, and it is medication for chronic maladies, rather than single-shot cures for infections, that will sustain the profits. Tuberculosis is still to a large extent a disease of destitute populations, though that is beginning to change. The focus, Shnayerson and Plotkin reveal, has in large measure shifted to vaccines, assisted by genomic strategies and improved procedures for rapid identification of the agents of infection. And perhaps the whole notion of eliminating the wily pathogens once and for all was misconceived: might it not be better to treat infections conservatively, for then the evolutionary advantage will rest with more benign strains, which do not kill their hosts? There is also now much research on peptides to inhibit the binding of the pathogen to its cell receptors. These have been sought in such improbable hiding-places as the saliva of the Komodo dragon. Finally, the long-neglected possibilities of bacteriophages are once more being taken seriously. It was a revelation to me that these specialised viruses have been in therapeutic use in the countries of the former Soviet imperium ever since their …