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By Steve
#3861
Ever had Angina or some other illness where you had to take antibiotics? Antibiotics can be a great thing, but they always overburden your entire organism, and these days it happens pretty often that they don't work because what you are trying to cure is already resistant against this particular medication. So you have to try a different brand of antibiotics, do more harm to your body etc.

I simply wonder why it's necessary to use your own body as a laboratory to test this. Should be entirely possible to put a few of those bacteria into a glass and see if they can be killed with this particular drug at all, then only take it if it works. I know this will be more expensive than eating pills at random, but maybe this could be offered at least to wealthier patients, and once it's established it can become a standard for everyone later on.

Reward: I'd rather like my antibiotics tested than being my own guinea pig.
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By FlatTop808
#3881
That sounds like a too simple solution to a very complicated problem. Just because it works in a petri dish doesn't mean it will work in the complex chemistry of your body. Add the fact that other meds may interfere and that everybody's body is different and you get no real answers.
By zyx Rationalist
#3887
FlatTop808 said - "the fact that other meds may interfere and that everybody's body is different and you get no real answers."

If that were true then we should definately have unique medecine for each person or it wont work
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By FlatTop808
#3891
zyx, you're vastly oversimplifying. The point of drug trials is to get a statistical measure of a drug's effectiveness and side effects. Pharmaceutical companies know that they can't cure everbody, so they look for drugs that help the most people while doing the least damage. Say something is effective in 90% of the population and causes projectile vomiting in only .5%, that's pretty good.
The point here is that Steve was looking for a 100% solution when the complexity of human chemistry doesn't make that possible. You took it to the other extreme and said that if its not 100%, then it must not work at all, which is obviously not true.
Gray areas exist in all disciplines, it would do you good to ponder them.
By Rishi
#4404
There already exists a test kit for antibiotics sensitivity evaluation. If I remember right, it consists of a plastic card that has something like 24 chambers (Sort of tiny bubbles containing different antibiotics), which are all connected to one common empty chamber. A sample of blood is drawn from the guineapig(Steve?) and injected into the empty chamber. The sample gets delivered to all the antibiotic cells. The test card is then incubated. Required Nurients are also included in the kit.

At ther end of 24 hours the card is popped into a card reader, which prints out the results. You are still the guinea pig in the larger sense but with less hassle. I am afraid the kit will not tell if you are allergic to the suitable antibiotic. I am sure somebody will come up with a kit for that too.
Rishi
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