[extropy-chat] magic johnson, aids, longevity ...

[ben]

Robert wrote:

> Antibiotic cocktails would be ineffective against viruses and would
> contribute to the ongoing development of antibiotic resistance which
> would not be good.

Doesn't the same logic apply, though? (wrt resistance, i mean. I hope we
all know that antibiotics are useless against viruses!).
Bacteria will acquire antibiotic resistance in a similar way to viruses
acquiring drug resistance, through genetic mutation (and horizontal gene
transfer, but with the same results, i think), so if they are hit by
more than one drug at the same time, they will have less chance of being
immune to that combination.

Or will the fact that (AFAIK) most of their resistance comes from gene
transfer mean that they are transferring already-tested mechanisms of
resistance that will have a better chance of working in combination with
other such mechanisms? In other words, horizontal gene transfer is less
likely to go wrong for the individual bacterium in a specific
environment (i.e. a combination of drugs) than a set of random (or
semi-random) mutations is for a virus?
Maybe i've just answered my own question, but i don't know enough
genetics to know if i'm talking rubbish or not. Let me restate it and
perhaps someone who actually knows what they're talking about can answer
it sensibly:

Will a combination of antibiotics be less likely to give rise to
antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria than using a single antibiotic?
And is this the same mechanism we see at work in multi-drug therapies
for viral infections?

If antibiotic cocktails are not a good idea, why is this, exactly?

ben