Why was phage therapy abandoned during the 20th century in favor of antibiotics – and why is it more acceptable today?
When western concerns first engaged in widespread attempts to commercialize phage treatments in the 1920s, scientific knowledge about phages and phage therapy was minimal. In fact, scientists had not conclusively determined that phages were a living organism (instead of an enzyme) until 1942. This confusion regarding the very essence of phages led to significant problems in the production of effective phage therapies. Scientists did not understand how precise the match between specific phages and their bacterial targets had to be in order for phage therapy to work. As a result, many early phage preparations did not contain the phages that were essential to their effectiveness against the particular infection they were produced to treat. In short, the same characteristics that make phages an attractive treatment alternative today (such as their highly selective ability to destroy harmful bacteria while leaving “good bacteria” intact) impeded the effectiveness of phages then. When the “m
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