Jessica, I would ask that you don't think of use of cleaning products as a bad thing. It's about common sense use of these products, including antibacterial cleaners and disinfectants. They products play a role in everyday hygiene routines -- they aren't the only means of infection control.
Please note the front page story on MSNBC right now: Soap up! The 12 germiest places in your life
Can Germs Keep Us Healthy?
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I'm likewise fascinated by the immunologists who are deciphering how bacteria and immune cells interact to tame damaging inflammation throughout the body. On a practical level, this gives us probiotic treatments for such things as inflammatory bowel disease. We also have bacterial vaccines in development that have a similar calming effect against allergies and asthma.
As a microbiology wonk, I particularly love the emerging understanding of how certain immune cells biochemically "shake hands" with bacteria passing through the digestive tract in food and swallowed dust particles. If the bacteria are judged "friendly," the result is a body-wide immune calming response.
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Greenwich, CT: Don't you think that that antibiotics have done more good than harm? Surely more people have been saved by antibiotics than those who have died from antibiotic-resistant infections.
Jessica Snyder Sachs: Absolutely! Antibiotics have done far more GOOD than harm. I think I'd be dead a few times over without them.
The point is that we need to preserve their effectiveness. And this means using them more wisely! Tuft University's Stuart Levy calls it the "Antibiotic Paradox." The more bacteria you kill with antibiotics, the more drug-resistant bacteria you get. It's like spraying an herbicide that kills everything but one kind of poison-resistant weed. Pretty soon that's all you have. (I don't happen to mind weeds, but that's another story.)
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Palo Alto, CA: How did this whole anti-germs thing get started?
Jessica Snyder Sachs: As previously mentioned, "microbe hunting" began with the discovery that SOME microbes make SOME people sick. How did we end up going so overboard? Some would blame Donna Reid's spotlessly clean kitchen. Certainly the makers of antibacterial cleaners and cleansers promote the idea of "nasty" germs lurking in your home, ready to attack you and your children.
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