万物简史 第451期:小生物的世界(22)

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Only one type of antibiotic¹, vancomycin, remained effective against it, 只有一种抗生素：万古霉素，用来对付它还有效果。

but in 1997 a hospital in Tokyo reported the appearance of a strain that could resist even that. 但1997年东京有一家医院报告说，葡萄球菌出现了一个新品种，对那种药也有抗药性。

Within months it had spread to six other Japanese hospitals. 不出几个月，那种葡萄球菌已经传播到6家别的日本医院。

All over, the microbes are beginning to win the war again: 在世界各地，微生物又开始赢得了这场战争的胜利：

in U.S. hospitals alone, some fourteen thousand people a year die from infections they pick up there. 光在美国的医院里，每年大约有14000人死于当地感染的传染病。

As James Surowiecki has noted², 詹姆斯·苏罗威基在《纽约客》杂志的一篇文章里指出，

given a choice between developing antibiotics³ that people will take every day for two weeks or antidepressants that people will take every day forever, 要是让制药公司在研制每天都服、连服两周的抗生素和永远每天都服的抗抑郁药之间作出选择，

drug companies not surprisingly opt⁴ for the latter. 制药公司会选择后者，这是不足为怪的。

Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical⁵ industry hasn't given us an entirely⁶ new antibiotic since the 1970s. 虽然有几种抗生素被强化了一点，但自20世纪70年代以来，制药工业还没有向我们提供过一种全新的抗生素。

Our carelessness is all the more alarming since the discovery that many other ailments⁷ may be bacterial⁸ in origin. 我们发现，许多别的疾病很可能是由细菌引起的，因此我们的马虎草率态度更是显得令人吃惊。

The process of discovery began in 1983 when Barry Marshall, a doctor in Perth, Western Australia, 这个发现过程始于1983年。当时，西澳大利亚州珀斯的巴里·马歇尔医生发现，

found that many stomach cancers and most stomach ulcers⁹ are caused by a bacterium¹⁰ called Helicobacter pylori. 许多胃癌和大多数胃溃疡为一种名叫幽门螺旋杆菌的细菌所致。

Even though his findings were easily tested, the notion was so radical¹¹ that more than a decade would pass before they were generally accepted. 虽然他的发现结果很容易得到鉴定，但那种观点如此激进，过了10多年才被大家接受。

America's National Institutes of Health, for instance, didn't officially endorse¹² the idea until 1994. 例如，美国国家卫生研究所到了1994年才正式接受那种看法。

"Hundreds, even thousands of people must have died from ulcers who wouldn't have," Marshall told a reporter from Forbes in 1999. “成千甚至成万的人可能死于溃疡，而他们本来是不会死的。”马歇尔1999年对《福布斯》杂志的一名记者说。

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