Superbugs

Antibiotic resistance, another front in Iatrogenic medicine's losing war on disease.

Superbugs is a well-written deep-dive into the fascinating history of antibiotics and a glimpse into the frontline struggle of doctors and scientists versus some seriously nasty strains of infectious bacteria and fungus. The book is written by Dr. Matt McCarthy, a staff physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Sorry guys and gals, this is another doom and gloom book review! Lately, I've been reviewing some books about the very troubling and very real threats to your life and well-being perpetuated by Iatrogenic mainstream medicine and bad science. Taking these red pills about the monstrous betrayals of humanity committed by the institutions of sciences and medicine can be depressing but the antidepressant is action, in this book review we'll include some evidence-backed biohacks that you can and should implement to fortify yourself against this world rife with microscopic villains.

What is an Antibiotic?

antibiotic to refer to any molecule, produced by a microbe or by a human working in a laboratory, that can be used in the treatment and prevention of bacterial infection. To qualify, it must either kill or inhibit the growth of at least one type of bacteria; those that kill are bactericidal, those that inhibit are bacteriostatic... (p. 18) 

Antibiotic Resistance

In medical science's mission to make better mousetraps, they have inadvertently (yet predictably) made better mice.

A MAXIM IN MEDICINE is that antibiotic resistance comes with a fitness cost, meaning that when bacteria become impervious to antibiotics—when they mutate into superbugs—they sacrifice something vital in return. Devoting resources to evasion leaves superbugs exhausted and unable to spread. It’s a phenomenon that infectious disease specialists count on, but it turns out this paradigm is changing: superbugs have recently become more fit and more virulent. In other words, they’re getting smarter and stronger. (p. 60)

The indiscriminate use of antibiotics in animals has been one of the primary drivers of superbugs. Bacteria living within animals get exposed to our best drugs and learn how to avoid them. (p. 118)

The spread of superbugs is driven largely by improper animal husbandry, poor sanitation, weak infection-control policies, and overcrowding—that’s why they often pop up in New Delhi and New York. (p. 170)

Bringing a number of antibiotics to market simultaneously would be problematic, he explained, because resistance would occur in tandem. (p. 62)

They were outfoxing us, and in some ways it felt like we were returning to a pre-antibiotic era, one in which a century of scientific progress had simply been erased. (p. 63)

the United Nations held its first General Assembly meeting on drug-resistant bacteria. It was only the fourth time the General Assembly had taken up a medical issue (the others were in response to HIV, Ebola, and noncommunicable disease) (p. 72)

“If we fail to address this problem quickly and comprehensively,” UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said at the meeting, “antimicrobial resistance will make providing high-quality universal health care coverage more difficult if not impossible.” (p. 72)

I must point out how absurd Ban Ki-moon's statement was, that high-quality universal health care is a total oxymoron. Universal (by which I think he means socialized) health care cannot be high-quality. The meritocracy of the free market is what creates quality healthcare. If you know somebody who has recently been to a public hospital or received socialized "healthcare", just ask them what the experience was like, they'll likely tell you it was downright awful! The protagonists in the book are these extremely hardworking frontline doctors and brilliant scientists committed to defending the defenseless from virulent superbugs, what they have in common is that they work in private hospitals and institutions - none of them are unfireable government agency apparatchiks.

My patients were increasingly whisked away to the operating room for surgical removal of gangrenous limbs because antibiotics were no longer effective. I looked on helplessly as a skin infection ravaged a young man’s body, shutting down his organs one by one. In the bed next to him, a marine officer was battling necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh-eating disease that developed after he popped a pimple near his groin. As I broke the news to his daughter that he might never walk again, I fought off the urge to scream. Something was very wrong. (p. 74)

Superbugs were evolving in ways we never expected, creating thousands of enzymes to chop up and destroy antibiotics. They were also developing molecular machinery known as efflux pumps to excrete antibiotics, rendering the drugs useless. With a single mutation, bacteria can spoil the chemists’ recipe, and the delicately designed antibiotic is ruined. Dying patients could be given something that simply doesn’t work, and a billion-dollar investment evaporates. (pp. 25-26)

Is Profit the Problem?

Many companies simply gave up looking for antibiotics, and that has led to the troubling situation we find ourselves in today. The bacteria that cause deadly infections in humans have become quite adept at inactivating the drugs we use to treat them, and we may soon run out of options. (p. 21) 

The problem, ultimately, is that many antibiotics are not very profitable. (p. 22) 

With an antibiotic, however, the profit margins are narrow because of three characteristics: they’re usually given in short courses, they’re prescribed only when someone is sick, and sooner or later even that terrific new antibiotic is going to develop drug resistance. (p. 22)

Pharmaceutical research and development has the highest failure rate for new products of any industry, which raises important questions: How far should we go to incentivize the production of new drugs? (p. 23) 

Pfizer, Merck, Novartis, and Johnson & Johnson, have gradually pulled funding from research and development, or simply given up. As Fauci pointed out, it’s a risky process, and these companies are accountable to shareholders, not patients. (p. 23)

In my book review of The Man Who Risked It All, I explained that I don't have a problem with capitalism or companies making money, the problem is the stock market, which without the state, would not exist and thrive. Upon careful examination, the root of evil is almost always the state. Although, big pharma really are evil fuckers...

In 2018, the president of Nostrum Pharmaceuticals, Nirmal Mulye, told the Financial Times that he had an ethical obligation to raise the price of the antibiotic nitrofurantoin by 400 percent. The drug is one of the most commonly prescribed treatments for lower urinary tract infections—it’s on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines—and its price jumped from $474.75 to more than $2,300 per bottle overnight. “I think it is a moral requirement,” Mulye said, “to make money when you can.” (p. 67) 

But as I heard time and again, antibiotics simply weren’t profitable—one economist told me that a great way to squander $30 million is to invest in an antibiotic—and that wasn’t going to change, no matter the incentives. Beyond that, the regulatory framework and approval pathway had become so onerous that it could be difficult to get any antibiotic study off the ground. (p. 80)

He sheds light on some egregious corporate trickery

[Allergan] had transferred the patents for its blockbuster eye drug, Restasis, to the St. Regis Mohawk tribe in upstate New York, allowing the company to invoke tribal sovereign immunity to fend off patent challenges from generic drugmakers. (p. 75)

Manufacturers typically get twelve to fifteen years of market exclusivity before generics can compete—unless the patent is transferred to an Indian reservation—but if generic manufacturers don’t bother, prices can actually increase after the patent expires. Between 2013 and 2016, one in ten antibiotics experienced a 90 percent price hike due to lack of competition. (p. 143)

On the cost of theory

GlaxoSmithKline, the London-based company, had moved away from antibiotic development, but it jumped aboard the genomic bandwagon and spent the next seven years (and close to $100 million) using genetic screens, which rely on a mix of robotics, automated detectors, and computational software to identify new drugs. Between 1995 and 2001, nearly a half million compounds were screened by GSK scientists. But only five emerged as genuine leads—and none were useful in humans. In short, the program proved to be a massive failure. (pp. 20-21)

I found this interesting synthetic organic chemistry is apparently, wildly expensive

Antibiotics that have been around for years can be rearranged to make them even stronger. Molecules are ripped open and split apart, then they’re fermented, ionized, reassembled, and purified. (p. 24)

I've got a solution to the profit issue, where it seems like big pharma is just not interested in developing the new antibiotics that are needed. The government should force pharmaceutical companies to do it. I'd love for Trump to come out in a press conference and say...

Humanity badly needs newer, better antibiotics. Big pharma has ample resources to do but they haven't been. So we are going to make them. If we're going to make Mexico pay for "The Wall" we can also make big pharma pay for new antibiotics. They have four years to develop four innovative new antibiotics that actually work. If they don't do it we'll take away their monopolies and special protections, we'll fine them tens of billions of dollars, we'll make them hurt...

In the book, the author has a couple of ineffective ideas for encouraging big pharma to make better antibiotics, like lowering their taxes. We are light-years away from a utopian libertarian society, and using government force for good could do a lot to address antibiotic resistance.  The more I learn about big pharma, the more I believe that the devil is real, it is astounding the pain and death that this industry perpetuates. Libertarians aren't going to like hearing this, but the purpose of the government and the law is to force people to be moral, let's start demanding that instead of hoping that "push-pull" incentives are going to motivate these psychopathic corporations to start giving a damn about people.

History

The book has a couple of interesting chapters delving into the history of antibiotics

In those days, German academia had close ties with the nascent pharmaceutical industry, and, in contrast with other industrialized nations, universities often catered to the needs of the private sector. Curricula were tailored to workforce demands. Unlike other industries, pharmaceutical companies had minimal overhead, requiring little in the way of equipment and lab space. What really mattered was human capital: scientists with the expertise to discover and develop drugs. (p. 31)

Informed consent is described

the Nuremberg Code, a ten-point framework for conducting future experiments on human beings. On the witness stand, Professor Ivy read from a set of principles and rules set forth by the AMA for clinical trials. These included: (1) that the individual upon whom the experiment was to be performed must give voluntary consent, (2) that the danger of the experiment must be previously investigated by animal experimentation, and (3) that the experiment must have appropriate supervision. (pp. 37-38)

We are losing informed consent, particularly in regards to vaccines, in many states and countries you simply don't get a choice about whether you or your family gets vaccinated, politicians who are owned by big pharma vote to remove philosophical and religious exemptions. And they don't inform you of the massive risks of vaccination. As the specter of COVID-19 looms over the world, I expect us to lose more health freedom. At some point, they are probably just going to say: we're forcing EVERYONE to take the COVID-19 vaccine, line up people! I don't think they are going to respect my choice at that point so my plan is just to bribe a doctor or a nurse to give me the paperwork certification for vaccinations and NOT the actual vaccines. There's this very thorough book, At Our Wits’ End, about how civilization is devolving because in "1st world" developed countries our collective intelligence is dropping. As a side effect, we are losing some of these basic moral human rights like informed consent.

On the placebo effect

Henry Beecher knew firsthand just how easy it was to manipulate patients. During World War II, he had served in military field hospitals in North Africa and Italy, where pain medications such as morphine could be hard to find. He noticed that nurses were able to calm injured soldiers with injections of saline when they were administered as if they were shots of morphine. A single infusion of salt water enabled young men to tolerate agonizing surgeries without anesthesia, and it introduced the young doctor to the power of the placebo effect, in which a patient’s belief in a treatment could be just as powerful as the drug itself. When he returned to Harvard after the war, Beecher continued to study the placebo phenomenon and argued for a new model of clinical research: one that called for randomization so that study subjects wouldn’t know if they were receiving a real treatment (like morphine) or a sham (like saline). His insights ultimately contributed to our appreciation for the randomized, controlled trial—the standard in human experimentation today...  (p. 47)

The placebo effect is fascinating! You'll want to check out my book review of You Are the Placebo.

A Reason for Hope

A vignette from the young life of a boy who went on to become a prominent doctor and scientist in the fight against infectious disease.

After his mother died, his father was hit with a devastating hospital bill. “Something around a hundred thousand dollars in today’s money,” he recalls, “and there’s no way we could’ve paid it.” The small-town doctors who treated his mother tore up the bill. “They just forgave it.” The physicians couldn’t save Tom’s mother, but they saved his father. (p. 57)

That was a different America! That boy would grow up to become Dr. Tom Walsh, the author's colleague whom a lot of the book is spent praising...

From hurricane relief to holiday coverage at the hospital, he never passed up a chance to volunteer. Before moving from the NIH to Cornell, the former altar boy and Eagle Scout had risen to the rank of captain in the US Public Health Service, jumping at the chance to join the Commissioned Corps Readiness Force to provide disaster relief everywhere from post-Katrina Louisiana to Lower Manhattan after 9/11. (pp. 138-139)

I had spent years observing the way Tom managed emergencies—the crashing patients, the frantic calls from doctors in far-flung places—and wondered if I could muster the same response: calm and deliberate, confident and reassuring. Tom has a quality that is as valuable as it is scarce, one that gets tossed around a lot but is truly remarkable when you find it: he is brave. He volunteers for things that I would never dream of doing, and he gets me to do things I might not attempt otherwise. (p. 139)

To many, Tom was an enigma, a man constantly on the move, but I had seen him in the quiet moments, agonizing over the management of a child on another continent, absorbing the pain of others, getting drugs to those most in need. Carrying on the mission. (p. 241)

There's a blog that documents his work, Mission from the Heart: Appreciation and Support of Dr. Thomas J. Walsh. I write a lot about how badly we screwed we are because of bad science and bad medicine but I see great reason for hope and optimism with ingenious doctors like Tom Walsh and Matt McCarthy on a mission to defend the defenseless, I just imagine how much good they could do if they had a little more of an antiestablishmentarian streak.

The stresses of being a doctor are described...

Physicians are stressed-out and beat-up, I tell them; what they really need is to feel normal again. They deserve sleep and a decent meal or an evening with friends. Maybe a glass of wine. They need things that a hospital cannot provide. (p. 182) 

the two qualities I’ve found in almost all successful physicians: toughness and kindness. (p. 225)

The Circuitous Path to a Clinical Trial

The book follows the author's challenging task of conducting an antibiotic drug trial for a new antibiotic he calls Dalba, Dalbavancin Reduces Hospital Stay and Improves Productivity for Patients with Acute Bacterial Skin and Skin Structure Infections: The ENHANCE Trial.

He explains what an Institutional review board is...

IRBs vary by hospital—there are currently about three thousand in the United States—and they’re composed of a diverse group of individuals to represent the broad interests and values of our society. Like a sequestered jury, they deliberate behind closed doors, under a shroud of secrecy. IRBs are, in theory, an invaluable mechanism to protect vulnerable patients, but they can be a thorn in the side of impatient researchers like me. They decide who may be studied and how. They can vastly alter clinical trials or shut them down completely. (p. 49)

The deeper I had gotten into the study, the more I came to appreciate a prior nemesis: the institutional review board. The IRB had been designed to protect patients, and that’s exactly what it had done. (p. 253)

The Ideal of Equipoise

He was referring to a state of uncertainty about the relative benefits of various treatments in a clinical trial. If equipoise exists, no enrollee in a randomized study is knowingly given inferior treatment. (p. 101)

The other problem—one that I chose not to discuss with Erwin—is that equipoise promotes the early termination of trials. If a data monitoring board believes that treatment A is better than treatment B in the midst of a study, the board can shut it down. And that can compromise results. (p. 102)

Science is too expensive!

antibiotic studies were becoming too complicated and too expensive. I had heard whispers that Allergan was on the verge of reallocating resources to other areas of research—things such as Botox and eye disease—and I couldn’t say I blamed the company. A study from the London School of Economics and Political Science estimated that, at discovery, the net present value of a new antibiotic was minus $50 million. (p. 189)

Vignettes of Iatrogenic Medicine

It contains some glimpses of the author's experiences that confirm the suspicions of those who worry that mainstream medicine is largely Iatrogenic; doing more harm than good. 

He meets an opioid pain pill addict

When he stumbled into my ER, Soren was a full-blown addict. The first thing I noticed was that his right hand trembled when he ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair. He had a skin infection covering his left forearm, and his chiffon-yellow eyes were barely open. His face was gaunt, and a webbing of wine-colored blood vessels was visible just below his thin, pale skin. Soren looked like a vampire with a sunburn. (p. 106)

The medical system had failed Soren, exposing him to whopping doses of narcotics after his surgery, transforming him from an ambitious young man into a reclusive opiate addict. We will never fully atone for that tragedy, (p. 256)

Since 2000, two hundred thousand Americans have died from overdoses related to prescription opiates such as OxyContin, and more than three-quarters of people who try heroin, as Soren ultimately did, started with prescription painkillers. His path to addiction began in a hospital. (p. 106)

He meets a 9/11 first responder

Donny was one of more than fifty thousand rescue workers potentially exposed to poisonous chemicals in the weeks that followed. In addition to cancer, many developed chronic, progressive, unrelenting physical and psychological syndromes that are largely untreatable. (p. 111)

“I’m getting this chemo drug,” he added. “Starts with a b.” He was referring to Bortezomib. “Costs three thousand a month, and they’re covering it. Government’s covering it. Can you believe that?” (p. 113)

The author describes healthcare–acquired infections, hospitals are great places to pick up some of the nastiest and most persistent superbugs. Even before the "corona apocalypse" I urged people to do everything in their power to avoid going to hospitals, I wouldn't go unless my leg was about to fall off.

Statism is, of course, the driving force behind the dehumanization of healthcare.

Hospitals were quick to respond to this radical restructuring of financial incentives: the average length of stay for a patient dropped from 10.0 days in 1983 to just 5.1 days in 2013. Turnover increased, and so did revenue. The faster patients are discharged—the shorter their lengths of stay—the faster the hospital can admit another patient and take in another lump sum. (p. 51)

Clindamycin can be remarkably effective—it has been on the market for fifty years and is on the WHO’s list of essential medicines—but it can also cause unfortunate side effects, including C. diff diarrhea. While the drug was destroying some of the bacteria on George’s skin, it was also wiping out a large swath of the good bacteria living in his colon. That cleared the way for Clostridium difficile to proliferate, producing a toxin that induced massive diarrhea. (pp. 94-95)

One of the more heartwrenching chapters describes the author's father-in-law's life and death struggle with cancer... 

After two months of intensive chemo, the tumor had shrunk by 10 percent, and surgery seemed like a possibility. But the treatment was also hurting Bill’s immune system, and we knew it was only a matter of time before some bacteria or fungus worked its way under his skin, causing an infection that could derail everything. (p. 244)

Like bacteria, cancer cells can develop drug resistance, mutating in ways that neutralize and inactivate our best drugs, and the toxicity associated with chemotherapy leaves some patients so ill they’re unable to continue with treatment. An overnight doctor in my hospital is often called to the bedside of a vomiting cancer patient in urgent need of rehydration. We’re pushing patients further than we ever thought possible, offering them a slim chance at a cure. (p. 119)

Check out my interview with Mark Sloan, discussing Iatrogenic mainstream cancer treatments.

Antibiotic Shortages

Between 2001 and 2013, there were 148 shortages of antibiotics, and doctors across the country resorted to second-class treatment options. (p. 69)

Only four companies produce the active ingredient in penicillin, and those manufacturers, based in China and Austria, keep production levels low because the drug offers so little profit. (p. 69)

Antibiotic shortages were a problem even in the best of times, just imagine how bad they are going to get during "supply-chain armageddon" which is now unfolding.

Lysins - A Promising Innovation?

Are a promising alternative to the antibiotics we now use...

Lysins are enzymes that have evolved over a billion years to degrade bacterial cell walls, he told me. They’re highly specific—there’s a lysin for nearly every bacterium—and they’re not subject to bacterial resistance. Unlike antibiotics, they don’t weaken over time. (p. 157)

In a string of papers in top journals, he continued to show the potential of lysin therapy as an alternative to antibiotics. (p. 158)

Fischetti convinced me that the notion of broad-spectrum bacterial warfare has become impractical. New dangers are appearing too quickly, and we can no longer afford to wait for the next miracle drug to wipe them out. The immunologist’s work sends a clear message: we need to attack bacteria one by one. (p. 161)

“It took a long time to get anyone from industry to invest in our work,” Fischetti said with a touch of amusement. “We were focused on targeted killing, but Big Pharma doesn’t want to hear that. They want broad spectrum!” Companies passed on lysin, figuring it wouldn’t turn a profit. (p. 158)

Infectious diseases specialists have become a dying breed in some parts of the country, cast aside by modern medicine. Most doctors are now compensated based on the types (and cost) of procedures they perform, and infectious diseases doctors don’t really perform procedures. (pp. 159-160)

 Candida Auris

The organism had been discovered in the ear of a seventy-year-old Japanese woman in 2008 and promptly spread all over the globe. The pattern of distribution was unpredictable—an intensive care unit in the United Kingdom found the fungus on its reusable armpit thermometers—and it was now popping up in Manhattan. The bug was often resistant to antifungal treatments, and mortality was skyrocketing. (p. 136)

Before the Coronavirus held the world in suspense, I worried that Candida Auris would be the next civilization-threatening pandemic. It's a scary bug! Ever since I watched the classic movie Outbreak, I became more and more convinced that the greatest threat to our species was not an errant asteroid but disease pandemics. The "Spanish Flu" killed so many because of the mass movements of troops during World War One and thanks to globalism we all need to fret a bit when an Ebola outbreak happens in some forlorn corner of Africa. I predict that the next apocalyptic pandemic, that kills millions (or billions) will not be due to a single virus, like COVID-19. I can foresee Coronavirus overwhelming hospitals resulting in a supply-chain armageddon, that renders populations bereft of antibiotics needed to fight more mundane infections. With the healthcare system overwhelmed, we will see a resurgence of other strains of infectious bacteria, Ebola, and who knows what else...

We are living in history and history happens in cycles

Bad times make men strong, strong men make good times, good times make men weak, and weak men make bad times...

In the 2020s, we're now all reaping the bad fruits sown by weak men.

How to Protect Yourself from Antibiotic-Resistant Infections

Red Light Therapy

There's not-insignificant evidence that infrared light therapy is effective in preventing and treating antibiotic-resistant infections. There are several hundred scientific papers on the subject of red light therapy and antibiotic resistance along with 11 clinical trials. From an article, Light Therapy Prevails Over Antibiotic Resistance

Antimicrobial [photodynamic therapy] for infections has shown great promise for overcoming such infections in the laboratory, although the actual clinical applications thus far remain quite limited. In the majority of clinical applications, the photosensitizer is applied topically to the infection, as is the case with acne, periodontitis, or non-healing ulcers... Upon irradiation with a specific wavelength of light (ideally, non-thermal red light), the dye reacts with oxygen to form highly reactive oxygen molecules, which in turn eradicate bacteria as well as fungi, viruses and protozoa... Recent studies have shown that [photodynamic therapy] may eradicate bacterial infections caused by C. difficile both in the cell culture and in living animals and humans...

Japanese and Chinese studies have demonstrated infrared light in the 635 and 660 nanometer ranges, along with sodium bicarbonate, and Methylene Blue as being effective in combating the villainous superbugs, including Candida Auris 

Candida auris is an emerging pathogen that has caused numerous severe infections in recent years, and has therefore become a global concern for public health agencies. Most conventional antifungal agents, especially fluconazole, have shown limited effects on this pathogen. New methods to restrict this pathogen are in urgent demand. Antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) has been shown to be a promising technique against multiple pathogenic fungi.

Red Light Therapy

 

5.0 (2)

Category: Mind Hardware

The FlexBeam

 

4.0

Category: Mind Hardware

Red light therapy has a sweet natural antibiotic cofactor, honey. From Red Light Therapy: Miracle Medicine

Honey has long been known for its powerful antibiotic effects.  Since ancient times it has been used to treat superficial wounds such as burns, scrapes or cuts.  Today the remarkable disinfectant ability of honey has been validated by scientific research. (p. 106) 

Honey is also antibacterial because it is “hygroscopic, which means that it can draw moisture out of the environment and dehydrate bacteria, and its high sugar content and low pH can also prevent the microbes from growth.” (p. 106)

Disappointingly, Superbugs doesn't mention red light or photodynamic therapy at all. This would seem to confirm the stereotype that doctors, especially doctors ensconced in academia who get published by big mainstream New York publishers, aren't interested in treatments outside of the big pharma paradigm. I know from my study of bad science, and reading books like Rigor Mortis, that in these overlapping statist fields of science and medicine, there's a tremendous disincentive against progress and innovation. Out-of-the-box thinking is met with ostracism. Reading this book, it would seem that mainstream doctors are only interested in the solutions to antibiotic resistance that make big pharma billions. The author would probably respond to criticism, saying something like...

Yeah, red light therapy has potential but there's not enough science done yet that we'd use it to treat patients, so it didn't make it into my book...

Well, the book thoroughly documents harm done by antibiotics. Red light does no harm, it has virtually no negative side effects. Considering the monstrous public health problem of antibiotic resistance, caused by antibiotics, shouldn't we be thinking beyond antibiotics?

Colloidal Silver

Medicinal silver is sometimes smeared as quackery by the mainstream media, but there are nearly 500 scientific papers about it published and five human clinical trials totaling over 360 people.

• A recent American study notes that Colloidal Silver has a persistent antimicrobial activity and outperformed a control in skin cleansing.
• A 2017 Iranian study found The aqueous extract synthesised [colloidal silver nanoparticles] also showed considerable antifungal activity against [antibiotic] resistant Candida albicans.
• An Indian animal study praises its anti-bacterial as well as anti-cancer activity and concludes We strongly believe that bio-synthesized AgNPs will open a new direction towards various biomedical applications in the near future. 
• Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains of bacteria were defeated by 350 parts per million Colloidal Silver solution in a 2013 Polish study.
  

A recent Canadian paper on antibiotic-resistant MRSA is optimistic about these alternatives to antibiotics...

Other more recently trialed nonantibiotic modalities such as antimicrobial photodynamic therapy and colloidal silver irrigation are also showing promise.

Silver is a powerful natural antiviral, antibacterial agent, we call our eating utensils silverware because in the past those who could afford to preferred to eat with silver utensils because it disinfected food and supported the immunity of the diner - this is one of the reasons why silver became a valuable metal in the first place. 

An article on All-Natural.com explains its antibacterial mechanism...

The presence of colloidal silver near a virus, fungus, bacterium or any other single celled pathogen disables its oxygen metabolism enzyme, its chemical lung, so to say. Within a few minutes, the pathogen suffocates and dies, and is cleared out of the body by the immune, lymphatic and elimination systems.

There's evidence that Colloidal Silver is better than pharmaceutical antibiotics...

Colloidal silver is a natural broad-spectrum antiseptic that fights infection, subdues inflammation, and promotes healing... It can be taken by mouth, administered intravenously, or applied topically. 

Research on colloidal silver shows it to be an effective resource against infections and pathogens, yet very little is known about it by the general public or the medical profession. Prior to 1938 it was in common use by doctors. According to Alexander G. Schauss, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University, considerable scientific evidence has been published regarding the effectiveness of silver as an antiseptic against "several hundred pathogenic organisms."

The author could have used his platform, this book which will probably be read by some policy-makers and purse-string pullers, to advocate for the NIH funding the badly needed science on red light therapy or other antibiotic alternatives. But I suspect that would not be great for Dr. McCarthy's career.

The book was very well written and a pageturner which is always a pleasant surprise when reading a non-fiction science book. The author illustrates the complicated science with creative metaphors and storytelling. Non-doctors (and even non-college graduates, like myself) can read the book and understand the microscopic war we are losing to virulent, antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Minus one star because this book is long on doom and gloom while lacking in solutions and innovative thinking.