We Live in a Bacterial World feat. Martin Blaser

Humans have gotten healthier and healthier over the years due to modern medicine and the power of antibiotics.. But those same antibiotics, when overused, can lead to a whole new set of ailments, most notably obesity.

Martin Blaser holds the Henry Rutgers Chair of the Human Microbiome at Rutgers University, where he also serves as Professor of Medicine and Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, and as Director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine. Previously, he served as Chair of the Department of Medicine at New York University. 

A physician and microbiologist, Dr. Blaser has been studying the relationships we have with our persistently colonizing bacteria. He also wrote Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues.

He and Greg discuss the overuse of antibiotics, how the antibiotic marketplace is broken, the variability among prescribers and the role of antibiotics in livestock.

Episode Quotes:

The overuse of antibiotics

Recently, the CDC estimated that about a third of the antibiotics used in the United States in people are unnecessary. My own estimate is that it's about 60%. That it's more than half of all the antibiotics used are unnecessary. And so now the question is when you use a lot of antibiotics, what happens?

The crux of Martin’s work

I have two crusades. One is to do the work, to understand exactly what antibiotics are doing and how we can counteract the bad part. So we can improve our use of antibiotics. And my other crusade is to tell people about this whole issue, because most people don't understand. They don't understand that just as we're damaging our macro ecology, which we call climate change, we're damaging our micro ecology. The ecology inside us.

Misinformation about bacteria

There are plenty of bad germs. But there's been a tremendous focus on the idea that microbes are bad.”Germ” is a negative term. Kids grow up learning about germs, companies sell products fighting those bad germs. But in fact, we live in a bacterial world.

Show Links:

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Rutgers University
• Author’s Profile at One World Publication
• Martin Blaser on LinkedIn

His Work:

• Works on Science Friday
• Martin Blaser on Google Scholar
• Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues

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