Public sanitation and antibiotic drugs have brought about historic increases in the human life span; they have also unintentionally produced new health crises by disrupting the intimate, age-old balance between humans and the microorganisms that inhabit our bodies and our environment. As a result, antibiotic resistance now ranks among the gravest medical problems of modern times. [This book] addresses not only this issue but also what has become known as the "hygiene hypothesis" - an argument that links the over-sanitation of modern life to now-epidemic increases in immune and other disorders. In telling the story of what went terribly wrong in our war on germs, [the author] explores our emerging understanding of the symbiotic relationship between the human body and its resident microbes -- which outnumber its human cells by a factor of nine to one! The book also offers a ... look into a future in which antibiotics will be designed and used more wisely, and beyond that, to a day when we may replace antibacterial drugs and cleansers with bacterial ones -- each custom-designed for maximum health benefits. -Dust jacket.

The war on germs -- Life on man -- Too clean? -- Bugs on drugs -- Fighting smarter, not harder -- Beyond lethal force: defang, deflect, and deploy -- Fixing the patient -- Coda: embracing the microbiome. Seven key terms and conventions -- Prologue : A good war gone bad -- Ricky's story -- Daniel's story -- Revenge of the microbes? -- war on germs -- From miasmas to microbes -- Germ theory reborn -- sanitarians -- search for magic bullets -- Life on man -- body as ecosystem -- Into the mouths of babes -- Life on the surface -- Life on the inside -- Bugs in space -- Where no biologist has gone before -- inner tube of life -- Who's the boss? -- new window opens -- Stealth infections or innocent bystanders? -- Too clean? -- Hair trigger -- From Hippocrates to the hygiene hypothesis -- history of self-destruction -- Children in the cowshed -- Teaching tolerance -- Innate immunity -- dirt vaccine -- Old friends -- Beyond immunity -- Bugs on drugs -- killer in the nursery -- end to bacterial disease? -- Microscopic mating games -- bacterial superorganism -- Danger ignored -- Old habits, new insights -- Out of the hospital and into our daily lives -- reservoir withing -- Resistance by the shovel -- Down on the farm -- antibiotic paradox -- pt. 5. The pt. 6. A A pt. 7. The dragon within -- Enhancing the bionic human -- From sepsis to chronic inflammation -- Immunobug immunodrugs -- Tweaking the bug -- Into the future -- Coda : Embracing the microbiome -- Notes -- Further reading -- Acknowledgments -- Index.