The book. After being relegated to the rank of laboratory tools in Western countries, phages, these bacteria viruses discovered at the beginning of the 20the century, are arousing renewed interest in the face of antibiotic resistance. How to develop phage therapies by freeing oneself from the eradicating logic that accompanies the abusive use of antibiotics, both in animal health and in human health?
This is the question explored by the anthropologist Charlotte Brives, in her book Facing antibiotic resistance. A political ecology of microbes, prefaced by the recently deceased philosopher Bruno Latour. And it is, according to the feminist approach of sciences and technology studies that it adopts, to deconstruct the infrastructure in question, from the language of war reducing microbes to their pathogenic dimension to the mass production of antibiotics by the capitalist system, passing through their evaluation according to the criteria of medicine based on evidence. “So what can the practice of medicine based on the eradication of microbes mean when the relationships we have with them appear to us to be much more complex and abundant than a simple relationship of pathogenicity? »she asks.
A quest for new models
Its rich and original investigation begins with the story of André, a paraplegic man suffering from recalcitrant urinary tract infections to whom two doctors refused the aid initially promised for the administration of phages purchased in Georgia. Hence an anger that the author describes with empathy while revealing the political dimension. “It would be very easy to downplay André’s speech for its excess and its ‘conspiracy’ accents, to exclude André from the discussions for his propensity to not respect the implicit rules. What fascinates me while listening to him is rather the way in which he politically translates his life with certain micro-organisms: there seems to be a solution; this solution is not available in France », she analyzes.
It then leads the reader into a reflection on the multiple potentialities of phages, bacteria and their interactions with their environments, including the human body, through the visit of a microbiology laboratory, the questions of infectiologists faced with the arbitrations between amputation and new therapeutic attempt, or the limits of regulatory frameworks.
Although the book will be easier to access for readers familiar with the sociology of science than for neophytes, its interest also lies in the author’s quest for new models which, without denying the methods of evidence-based medicine, enrich them. This is the case of the tailor-made therapies developed at the Croix-Rousse hospital in Lyon, or at the Reine-Astrid military hospital in Brussels, based on the search for the most accurate responses to complex medical situations. in the face of which it is no longer a question of claiming to be able to eradicate at all costs, but of accepting and making livable.
You have 3.94% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.