Incredible as It May Seem, Bacteria Are Our Friends
In recent columns, we’ve focused on the disease-causing side of bacteria--too much so for one microbe-hugging pal of ours. “People should just try living without bacteria,” she snorts.
She has a point. Most bacteria are harmless, and some are out-and-out useful, making it possible, for instance, for us to exist. (Bacteria provide plants--and ultimately humans--with essential elements such as nitrogen.)
In the spirit of evenhandedness, therefore, we present “Three Reasons Why Bacteria Are Our Friends,” compiled with the help of microbiology professor Jeffery Miller at UCLA School of Medicine.
No. 1: Bacteria help us simply by clamoring, “No Room! No Room!”
We are swarming with bacteria, says Miller, especially in the colon, where there are 10 billion bugs per cubic centimeter. Those critters--E. coli and dozens of its pals--seem to stop other, nastier bugs from growing there. They’re already eating food and taking space that the bad bugs want.
When we take antibiotics, the drugs kill off a lot of these desirable residents (they grow back later). Sometimes this allows undesirables--like salmonella or one called Clostridium difficile that causes colon inflammation and diarrhea--to get an edge and move into the neighborhood.
No. 2: Bacteria help keep our defenses strong.
The “OK” bugs are always there, in our guts, and our immune system senses this and stays on semi-alert. This helps ward off “not OK” microbes.
In fact, says Miller, certain harmless bugs look similar enough to certain harmful ones that they may help give us immunity to pathogens. (E. coli looks kind of like a bug that causes ear infections and meningitis, for instance.)
And, No. 3: Bacteria nourish us. Certain gut bugs contribute vitamins such as B12, folic acid, thiamin and vitamin K.
The Robodoc Will See You Now
We were bemused recently to witness two robots at a pathology lab gliding down the corridors delivering specimens. We hadn’t paid much attention to robots since reading about one called “ScrubMate,” designed to clean latrines.
But it so happens that the latest “Handbook of Industrial Robotics,” edited by robotics expert Shimon Nof of Purdue University, has just seen the light of day. Rather than plow through all 1,400 pages, we contacted Nof to get the lowdown.
From Nof, we learned about the RxBOT, a robot that trundles through pharmacies picking out drugs for various patients with the help of bar codes and a robotic arm. Another, called Autoscript II, fills mail-order prescriptions--2,500 of them in an eight-hour shift.
And then there’s AESOP, which stands for Automated Endoscopic System for Optimal Positioning. It’s a robotic arm that holds and moves a laparoscope for surgeons during certain procedures, eliminating the need for human laparoscope holders.
Along the same lines, there’s Robodoc, which drills an accurate hole in the human long bone (the femur) during hip replacement surgery.
The handbook also describes robots being developed for needle insertion, brain surgery and prostate surgery--and offers reasons why robots might be better at some tasks: greater access to certain tissues, lower health care costs in some cases--and a big one, better control. (“The surgeon’s hand may tremble; the robot is stable,” says Nof.)
The future sounds even wilder. Nof envisions a day when little robots race around battlefields performing surgery on soldiers, and--further in the future--tiny robots slithering inside the human body to do repair jobs like clearing blocked blood vessels.
One day, he says, teams of robots will have to work together. So his lab is working hard on the issue of “conflict resolution,” which to us conjures up fearsome images of robots tugging a prostate back and forth or squabbling over a bone-driller.
Luckily, Nof thinks robots will be rather better at settling disputes than people. We don’t doubt it.
