One of the greatest triumphs of human ingenuity has been our progress against infectious disease. Today, we have only the mute testimony of millions of gravestones to remind us of the lives tragically cut short by scarlet fever, polio, smallpox, or rampant infections of childbirth. But these mighty conquests are of small comfort to Christy and Chad Gimmestad of Evans, Colo. Their 16-month-old daughter, Anna Grace, died in late 1996 during a worrisome outbreak of E. coli, a vicious microbe unknown until 1980. E. coli's rampage continues: It sickened 16 people in Colorado last year.
Nor is the miracle of penicillin and other antibiotics much consolation to the families of the 33 people who have died of rampaging strep A infections since December in Texas. And our successes treating the terrible lung disease tuberculosis may not have much meaning for California teenager Debi French. In 1993, French came down with a TB infection potent enough to fight off even today's miracle drugs. Only after a two-year struggle--and the surgical removal of nearly half of her right lung--did the high-schooler come out on top in this battle of humanity vs. the microbes. On Mar. 18, the World Health Organization warned that TB could infect 1 billion more people in the next 20 years.
Scarcely a week goes by without a report of some dire and growing threat. Mysterious hantaviruses are causing gruesome deaths in the West. Potent new forms of TB are emerging in Tennessee and Kentucky. Staph germs that don't respond to the most commonly used antibiotics are spreading from Chicago hospitals to the surrounding community.
In fact, more than 30 dangerous new infectious agents have been discovered in the past two decades. The death rate in the U.S. from infections jumped nearly 58% between 1980 and 1992. Researchers estimate that hospital-acquired infections alone are responsible for a staggering $4.5 billion in annual U.S. health-care costs.
The situation is far grimmer elsewhere. With malaria, TB, and dengue fever on the rise, microbes are now causing one-third of the world's 50 million-plus deaths each year. "We are seeing a global resurgence of infectious diseases," U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher warned Congress on Mar. 3.
Experts say humanity is now at a crucial turning point in the millennia-old war against microbes. One reason is the explosion in world population. Another is air travel--the deadliest infectious diseases are only a plane ride away from New York, London, or Tokyo.
Most ominously, though, microbes have been hard at work in a deadly race, mutating to create potent new defenses far beyond the reach of many existing treatments. "We have never been more vulnerable," says microbiologist and Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg. "When I go through all the adaptations [made by] the microbial world to make a living at our expense, I sometimes wonder how we're still here."