Results: Superbug crisis threatens to kill 10 million per year by 2050. Scientists may have a solution

In the United States alone, more than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur each year. Such infections are a "urgent global public health threat," killing 5 million people worldwide, according to 2019 statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Have you or anyone you know ever experienced a drug-resistant infection or complications due to antibiotic resistance?

"It's estimated that by 2050, 10 million people per year — that's one person every three seconds — is going to be dying from a superbug infection," said infectious disease epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee, codirector of the first dedicated phage therapy center in North America, the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics, or IPATH, at UC San Diego School of Medicine. How severe do you believe antibiotic-resistant infections are as a global public health threat?

Doctors are trying to treat infections with one of nature's oldest predators — tiny tripod-looking viruses called phages designed to find, attack and gobble up bacteria. The microscopic creatures have saved the lives of patients dying from superbug infections and are being used in clinical trials as a potential solution to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. Would you be open to using phages, another virus, as an alternative treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections?