Even today antibiotics are deployed like missiles of war, unnecessarily, indiscriminately and with a lot of collateral damage. The result, antibiotic resistance, currently the leading cause of death globally and looming as the biggest threat to the future of humanity, demands a wholesale revision of the way these weapons of war are used both by doctors who prescribe them without restraint and patients who demand them without reservation. To avoid this indiscretion tests are currently available which allow doctors to discriminate between viruses when antibiotics are not needed and bacterial infections when they are. Right now these aren’t utilised enough.
Experts predict that this impasse will lead to a comprehensive restructuring of our current arsenal with artificial intelligence guiding the development of new technologies which target invading microbes more individually based on the exact identification of the threat while stimulating an immune response customised to the recipient’s capabilities, like a tailor-made suite.
But these are only at the early stages of development. As we wait for this new sophistication to become reality which will take time, in ‘Immune Apocalypse’ a number of strategies are outlined for amplifying the immune system thereby reducing our dependence on the slow march of scientific evolution.
